


O is for Opportunity

by baberainbow



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Gen, M/M, Not alphabetically listed, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29665092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baberainbow/pseuds/baberainbow
Summary: Twenty-six snapshots from Nile's first few months of immortality. She endures a lifetime of bullshit, but a whole lot of love, too.
Relationships: Andy & Nile & Joe & Nicky, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 11
Kudos: 123
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. The First-ish Week

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read. 
> 
> Lovely fanart by [Lina!](https://linaxart.tumblr.com/)

**O is for *Opportunity***

“I’d like for us to leave now,” Andy says to Copley, rejecting his offer of lodging for the evening. “I am not fond of Brittania.” 

Copley’s brows piqued then furrowed. “Well, of course, whatever makes you --” 

“What, comfortable?” Joe asks sarcastically. He gives Copley a dubious look. 

“Again, I apolog--” 

“Enough, enough” Andy says, and she goes over to Copley’s desk and scribbles a number on a sticky note. “There is still much you don’t know. There is a lot you must do for us. This number should be good for a month. Make contact before then.” She tears the paper from the pad and jams the note into his hand. Then, she nudges over her shoulder to signal it’s time to go. “And I’m not paying for any collection calls or international fees. I don’t know how that stuff works.” 

Nile can’t tell if that last part’s true. She’s come to find Andy has a strange, undefinable sense of humor. Sometimes her jokes mostly tiptoe between darkly funny and _a bit too far_. Or, she has the comedic tendencies of a teenager, snarky and immature. 

“I understand,” Copley says. “Safe travels to you all.” He knows he’s not needing to give a long-goodbye to this group that is more suspicious and resentful than trusting and amicable. 

“Oh,” Andy says before she walks from the office. “Don’t put that sticky note up on your wall.” 

She lets Andy lead the way back to their sedan. They parked in his actual driveway this time; Andy had pointed out upon arrival. “Last time, I had a bit of a walk.” 

“How’s your wound, Andy?” Nicky asks once they’re outside. “You’ve been on your feet.” 

“It feels fine. You bandage like you’re some centuries old physician,” she teases, taking the driver’s seat. Nile takes shotgun. Joe and Nicky slide into the back. “It’s a relief to know we’ve moved past the humors. And leeches.” 

“I know we were just at a bar,” Joe says. “But I think I would like another drink. That was a lot. A lot to see again.” 

“Can we at least leave the island first?” Andy asks, cranking up the car. “The air out here, outside the city, it’s too --” She shifts into drive. “We’ll go to St. Pancras, and you can drink something there.” 

Nicky says, “I would suggest we avoid Paris. Antwerp?” 

“Belgium, right? I’ve never been to Belgium,” Nile says. 

“Then we go to Antwerp,” Andy decides. “Oh,” and she digs one hand into her jacket pocket and pulls out her phone and blindly thrusts it to the backseat. “Can one of you text StP guy’s contact? It’s the fifth one in my list thing. We need to get Nile a passport. Tell him we’ll pay extra for the rush job.” 

Joe takes the phone and types with Nicky watching over his shoulder. An answering buzz has Joe scoff. “It does not cost that mu--” 

“Darling, we’re not bartering with them again. Unless you want the passport to ‘accidentally’ have ink splotches,” Nicky chides. “Agree to the terms.”

Joe mutters under his breath as he texts back and flips the phone shut. “Ridiculous.” 

“I’m getting a fake passport at the station?” 

“In an alleyway a few blocks from the station. He has the white backdrop, printer, finishing, everything. We’ve used him a few times, and he’s good. Think up a new name. You need one for this. This is your opportunity to restart." 

\--

Andy parks the car in a packed lot, and they shuffle out. “Get us the tickets?” she tells him and Joe, counting out some bills and handing it over. “Earliest we can get.” 

“Yes, yes, we know,” Nicky says.

“Don’t take too long at your photoshoot,” Joe teases. 

__

Nicky nudges him in the side and takes his hand. They walk to the station, and he lets Joe do all the talking while he keeps lookout. He’s still paranoid. Just as easily as he and Joe could blend into a crowded place like this, so too could someone follow them unnoticed. 

__

“Here, hold onto these” Joe says, and he refocuses, taking care to stick the passes into his jacket. “Earliest one they had leaves in about an hour and a half,” he tells Nicky in Italian as they blend back into the crowd away from the booth towards the exit. 

__

“So we have enough time for that drink?” Nicky poses lightly. Joe hums, the laugh caught in his throat. “Yusuf, darling, what is it?” 

__

“We’ve decided to trust the very man who has an exhaustive paper trail on us to be the one to keep us hidden,” he grits out. “The man who has Andy’s blood staining his carpet. The very man who--” Joe stops, and he takes Nicky’s hand. His eyes are wet, and he says, “Darling, I cannot say that I wouldn’t do anything for you. I’ve killed for you and died for you, and you’ve done the same for me. But I would never, in your name, in your memory, hurt someone as he had harmed us.” 

__

“Nor would I,” Nicky swears. He squeezes Joe’s hand. “His grief is not entirely unknown to us, but if he loved his wife as I’ve loved you, it is possible that mourning the love of his life took a toll we do not know. For I still have you, and you still have me.” 

__

“You’re too kind,” Joe laments, but he’s wistful, thumb rubbing worried circles in Nicky’s palm. 

__

“I said that about you once, didn’t I? Hm? Too kind, too caring for a wretched soul?” 

__

Joe huffs a startled laugh. “Yes, quite the sweet talker, you were.” He releases a hand to rub at his eye, then he draws Nicky’s hand up to kiss it. “Come. I know there’s that pub next to that hack’s set up. Share an Irish Coffee with me?” 

__

“Always,” Nicky promises. “Well, so long as there’s cream on top of it.”

\--

Nile stares down at her fresh-off-the-illegal-printer passport. “This picture isn’t the greatest,” she says. “But whatever. If it works, it works.” 

__

“It’s fine,” Andy says, flipping her phone closed. “The boys are just across the street.” 

__

“You didn’t even look at it,” Nile argues, and she displays it before Andy’s face. “See?” 

__

“I’ve seen worse. Now, come along Jile Ann Nichols of Britain,” Andy cajoles. “Very original name, by the way.” 

__

“And what does your fake passport say? Andromache the Scythian?” 

__

Andy laughs. “Alexandra Black of the Czech Republic.”

__

“Okay. Guess I better start keeping a list of names starting with N that I can pick and choose.” 

__

“Or you could filter through names of rivers? Or just the name ‘River’ itself.” 

__

“Why?” 

__

“Y’know, Booker’s last name was Le Livre. Booker came from that. We can make our names literal.” 

__

“Is there a colloquial term for Mankiller I’m not aware of?” 

__

Andy laughs. “If there is, let me know. I wouldn’t mind wearing that name.” 

__

\--

__

“And I’d forgotten what he looked like,” Joe continues, swirling his spoon so the foam drowns into the drink. “Till I saw that picture of us, sitting with him, playing dice. John was a good man.” 

__

“Perhaps, a silver lining?” Nicky asks. “I had forgotten his face. Yet, that story he told of the misunderstanding at the brewery in uh, what was it?” 

__

“Wait, wait. Philadelphia!” 

__

“Yes, that’s where he was from. I still remember how it made you laugh. I don’t remember the plot of it or the punchline, but your smile those days were so rare, darling. It was such a joy to see.” He tucks Joe’s hand into his own and he could _blush_ even after all these years, just by the weight, the tenderness, the glitter of Joe’s eyes looking into his. “Your joy is precious to me.” 

__

“Come here,” Joe implores, but he’s the one that breaks the small distance between them to kiss him. 

__

Andy, always with favorable timing, clears her throat as she and Nile step in front of their booth. “Sappy looking face you got there, Nico,” she says, sliding into the booth next to him. “Oh, and say hi to Jile Ann Nichols!”

__

“I’ll just let you pick my next name,” Nile grumbles, scooting in next to Joe. “What time’s the train leaving?” 

__

“Less than an hour,” Nicky says, unfolding the tickets and handing one to Andy and Nile. “King’s Cross St. Pancras to Antwerpan-Centraal.” 

__

“Do you guys have a cave or abandoned church in Antwerp to stay at?” Nile asks. 

__

Andy looks to Joe and Nicky, eyebrows raised. Joe shakes his head. “We sold our flat in the ‘90s, remember?” 

__

“Guess we’ll be camping on the streets,” Andy mournfully suggests. 

__

Nile doesn’t take the bait. “That sounds fun. Isn’t the station next to a zoo? We should consider trying to break into the reptile exhibition for warmth.” 

__

Andy rolls her eyes. “We’ll get a hotel. Now, if you boys are done with your hot chocolates, let’s get to the station. Don’t let me forget to grab some snacks from Marks & Spencer.”

\--

Half an hour into the train ride, Nile clears her throat.

Seated across from her, Joe and Nicky simultaneously look up from their book. It’s still weird that they sync up like that. Andy to her left makes an inquisitive hum. 

__

“So,” Nile says, very seriously. “Quicksand?” 

__

“Mhm?” 

__

“Was it a legitimate concern for you at any point in time?” 

__

The three look at each other. 

__

“No,” Joe says carefully. 

__

“Oh,” Nile grunts, and she fits her hands into her lap.

__

“Did you think it would have been?” Andy asks, curious. 

__

“Nah, nope. It’s just, it seems like when I was growing up, that people made a bigger deal of it than it deserved.” 

__

Andy furrows her brow. “Are you...disappointed?” 

__

Nile makes her mouth a flat line. “No. Not at all.” 

__

“I mean, we can try to find somewhere with quicksand--” Joe starts. 

__

“Nope, nope. Sorry I asked,” Nile says. 

__

They back off. 

__

Then: 

__

“So,” she says again. “Any of you seen a dodo bird?” 

**I is for *Indulgence***

They book two suites. Not adjoined, but they’re across the hall from each other.

Joe and Nicky have not had a room to themselves since the night before they left for Marrakech. They haven’t indulged in anything more than kissing and groping either. 

After carrying Andy’s ‘guitar case’ up to her and Nile’s room, Joe gives Andy a raised eyebrow. She scoffs. “Go on. We’ll get dinner at like eight. I’ll knock if you two get too loud.” 

Joe laughs and heads over to their room, tucking the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, and locking the door behind him. 

“Nicolò,” he says softly, leaning against the door, overwhelmed with love at the sight of Nicky unpacking his duffle bag. “Darling.” 

Nicky smiles and nudges his head to the side, like ‘get over here.’ 

“I need you,” Joe tells him, bundling Nicky into his arms. “This has been a terrible week.” 

“I know,” Nicky croons. “I need you, too.” 

“You were right next to me, and all I could do was _watch_ ,” Joe mournfully reminds. 

****

“And I the same for you,” Nicky says. “I am sorry we had to see and hear those things being done to each other.” 

****

__

****

“Well, it was a little reminiscent of our first melee or two, no?” Joe quips softly, and Nicky snorts. 

****

__

****

“Minus the bondage, prods, and the drills? In a way, yes,” Nicky laughs. “Come here. Let’s make this week a little better.”

****

__

****

****

__

****

\--

****

__

****

**  
_  
_   
**

****

Andy claims the double bed farthest from the window. Her side hurts more than she’s been letting on, but now, with Nile preoccupied with some brochure about the city, she doesn’t have to act tough. She considers texting the boys, asking Nicky to come take a look, but she remembers that they’re also preoccupied as well. 

****

__

****

For a moment, she thinks about asking Book for some help. She has to correct that notion quickly. The thought of him hurts more than the bullet he shot straight through her.  
In Copley’s house earlier today, she had looked around for the bullet. He hadn’t cleaned his carpets drenched with her blood, but maybe Copley had found the metal fragments. Would he throw it out, or preserve it: plop it into a little baggie then staple the damn thing to his wall.

****

__

****

“You okay?” Nile says from the other bed. 

****

__

****

Andy shrugs. “I’m fine.” 

****

__

****

Nile gives a disbelieving hum. “There’s a chocolate factory down the block. Wanna go? You said chocolate here’s the best.” 

****

__

****

The pain in her side says no, but Andy says, “Yeah, sure.” She hoists herself up the bed. “Might need to stop for some pain relief at a drugstore. Y’know, a few years ago, they used to put fucking cocaine and heroin in health tonics. I’d kill for some of that shit now.” 

****

__

****

“You mean in the 1900s?” 

****

__

****

“Yeah, a few years ago,” Andy says, cracking a small hint of a smile.

****

__

****

****

__

****

\-- 

****

__

****

**  
_  
_   
**

****

It’s too much and it’s not enough. He feels too much. So much sadness even though he’s so full of love and being loved. Andy’s mortality stings. A Booker-shaped hole gapes in Joe’s heart. Their torture flashes behind his eyelids no matter how well Nicky’s fucking him. 

****

__

****

“More. I’m hurting, Nicky, help me,” Joe tells him. 

****

__

****

“Darling,” Nicky croons, and he kisses the top of Joe’s sweaty temple. “I’ve got you. Relax.” 

****

__

****

Nicky fucks him harder, raises his hips up from the mattress to angle his thrusts in better and deeper, and he kisses Joe’s neck, whispering against his jugular. He’s humming, in a way, against the vein. The vibrations from his lips tickle, and the rocking of their bodies sync together. 

****

__

****

Joe’s so fucking overwhelmed. He could combust into tears or just into a ball of light stoked by his lust and love and need for Nicky. His toes curl against the sheets, and his fingernails dig into Nicky’s shoulders. “I’m almost there,” he half-laughs, half-whimpers. 

****

__

****

Nicky bites the jut of his chin then licks to soothe the mark. “Tremble it out, baby. Tremble it out.” 

****

__

****

Joe opens his eyes -- he doesn’t remember even shutting them -- as he rocks up his hips to meet Nicky’s, fevered and needing. “How do you do this to me every time, Nico? How do you do that, honey?”

****

__

****

“Mm?” is the only response Nicky gives, and that’s a reasonable response. There’s no ‘reason’ for this; their existence remains beyond ‘reason’ and ‘logic’ itself. Their love cannot be described by any word, cannot be defined by any line of thought. “Mm?” 

****

__

****

“Yeah, fuck,” Joe counters and his nails dig into Nicky’s shoulders. 

****

__

****

“Mm,” Nicky agrees, and he kisses Joe’s neck, keeping their hips pumping back and forth against the bed in a constant rhythm until his next “nmhm” dictates that they’re going to fuck each other faster, and Joe’d thought he’d been clinging to him hard, but he smushes them together tighter. “Mm.” 

****

__

****

Nicky takes care of him. He always does. Joe reminds Nicky of this afterward, lying against his chest, breathing hard and sated. 

****

__

****

“I love you, and I love taking care of you,” Nicky says back. “You do the same for me.” 

****

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Joe rubs his cheek against Nicky’s chest, looking for the heartbeat. “I love you, too.”

****

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_\--_

****

**  
_Andy gets bored with Antwerp after two days and her (probably) hundredth chocolate treat. Even though Nicky’s picking up takeout, the box she’d snagged at a chocolatier demanded immediate attention._   
**

****

“We’re gonna go to Hungary,” Andy declares, wiping her fingers on the parchment paper that had covered her box of pralines. 

****

__

****

“What? You think I need to learn Hungarian first? Not a Romance language or Germanic one at least?” Nile protests, thinking this is in response to the current back-and-forth Nile and Andy’d been engaged in, deliberating which new language Nile should start learning. 

****

__

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“No, we’re not going to Hungary because I want you to learn Hungarian,” Andy says. “One of the almonds in a praline just now reminded me of this one bakery in Budapest, and I would very much like to visit it.” 

****

__

****

“So we’re going just for food?” 

****

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“Would you also like to learn Hungarian?” 

****

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****

“You said yesterday that it was one of the hardest ones you had to learn!” 

****

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“This past century,” Andy corrects. “And don’t get me started on--” 

****

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“Alphabets and how they evolve, I know; I know.” 

****

__

****

Andy tilts up her chin. “So, indulge me a week in Budapest. I am recovering from a terrible injury, you know.” She looks at Joe as though she’s trying to goad a reaction because she, Joe, and Nicky have also been engaged in a meandering argument about Andy’s wellbeing and travelling. He doesn’t take the bait. “I should take all the comfort I can get.”

****

__

****

Instead, Joe remarks, “Andromache, you just ate an entire box of chocolates before dinner.” 

****

__

****

“Hey, now, I just said I should take all the comfort I can get. I should take all the comfort I can get here, and I should also get some in Budapest. And then in Budapest, I’ll think of another place I want to drown in desserts.” She looks down at her stomach. “You know, because I’m so fragile and I need to take all the comfort I can get.” 

****

__

****

He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “You’re insufferable.” 

****

__

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“And?” 

****

__

****

“And you’re worthy of all these delicacies,” Joe says. “At least wait until Nicky’s back with dinner before we pack our bags, please?” 

****

__

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“Of course, Joe,” Andy says. “I look forward to the dinner Nicky’s picking up.” 

****

__

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“Don’t you say it, Androm--” 

****

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“Because I should take all the comfort I can get.” 

****

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“For fuck’s sake,” Joe sighs delighted and peeved. 

****

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“Do you have a cave in Budapest?” Nile asks. 

****

__

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“On the outskirts, there’s a flat I got in the early naughts. We can spend the first night in the city.”

****

**L is for *Little Sister***

“You rise early, too,” Nicky comments, sliding back the glass door to the little balcony.

****

“Did I wake you?” she asks, startled and concerned because that door had put up resistance when she first tried to open it resulting in a loud squeak. Nicky shakes his head. 

****

__

****

“I wake up early, but stay in bed. I saw you come out and wanted to join you.” 

****

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“Ah.”

****

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****

“I used to be the only ‘morning-person.’ I am glad to see I’m no longer alone.” 

****

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****

“Habits die hard. Kinda like us, huh,” she muses blankly. 

****

__

****

“Hm,” he hums. 

****

__

****

“Does Andy always snore that loud?” she asks, and Nicky’s lip curve a little. 

****

__

****

“Her snoring comes and goes. She’s never snored on a battlefield --mentally or physically, but she will when she’s on reprieve. It’s a good sign.” 

****

__

****

They’re staying in a two-bed suite in a boutique hotel in the heart of Budapest. Antwerp had given them two bedrooms, but Nile’s accustomed to sleeping in tight quarters in general. It’s a little different having a six thousand year old hogging the other side of your bed while the actual oldest men on earth snore in the one next to you. 

****

__

****

Nicky and Joe’d taken the bed closer to the door, and she and Andy took the bed facing the window. Well, more like Andy chose her bed and let everyone else figure out the sleeping arrangements. They’d arrived late last night, and after checking in, Andy had flopped onto the bed without a word and stayed face down, dead asleep and probably would sleep forever if she had the chance. She didn’t even flinch when Nile yanked some covers while she crawled under, and she didn’t move when Nile managed to cover Andy with the throw blanket she’d rested her boots on. She was wearing steel-toed shoes, of course. 

****

__

****

And she didn’t notice when Nile rolled out of bed. She’d woken up right when the little alarm clock blinked 07:00 in red. She’d rolled out, pulled on some socks, and stepped out. 

****

__

****

“I like to people watch,” she says after a moment of silence, staring out at the city below them. 

****

__

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“I do too.” He tilted his head back towards the door. “I know a good spot for breakfast with a patio that’s just as good for observing people. Would you like to join me?” 

****

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“Sure,” she agrees, and he silently slides the glass door. He motions her to go in first, and she watches as he once again somehow closes it without such much as a creak. 

****

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She changes quickly, noticing that he had slept again in everyday clothes. She likes her fleece pajama pants and sweatshirts too much. Sleeping in jeans will _not_ be a new normal so long as she can help it. 

****

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****

Nicky leans down to Joe’s side of the bed, and she gives them privacy as he whispers softly to Joe. “He’ll join us later,” Nicky explains as she raises a brow. She’d assume Joe would be tagging along. “He likes to sleep in.”

****

__

****

She’s never spent time alone with Nicky. Or Joe, really. Ever since last week, she’s been either alone, with what she now calls NickyJoeAndy, or a combination in twos. 

****

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****

There’s a lot she still doesn’t know about Nicky and Joe personally besides that they’re the oldest-of-old marrieds and some tactical observations. 

****

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****

She likes him, of course. She doesn’t have a reason not to. But he’s as much a stranger to her as she must be to him. To all of them, really. 

****

__

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She follows him into a bakery, and she watches as he selects some pastries from behind the counter. “They’ll bring us our coffees,” he tells her, holding their wax paper wrapped-up breakfast in his massive hand. “Let’s grab a seat outside.” 

****

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“So,” she starts, after picking at some flakes of the pastry. 

****

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“Mm?” 

****

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“Is your name really ‘Nicky?’” she asks. “I know Andy’s is Andromache. I’m assuming the name Nicky wasn’t exactly popular in the eleventh century.” 

****

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“Nicolò di Genova is the one I was baptized under. I’ve had many names since.” 

****

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“Have names, you know, changed a lot? I’m wondering if my own name in like I don’t know five hundred years will sound as…” and she drifts off. 

****

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“Antiquated?” 

****

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“Yeah. Sorry, I --” 

****

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‘You won’t offend me by talking about how old I am. In fact, it’s refreshing. Being honest about who I am, that is. It’s a rare, but extremely cherished experience to get to introduce myself fully.” 

****

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“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she says. “It must be hard.” 

****

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“It is, but in other ways, it’s not. I don’t know how to explain it to you until you know yourself.” 

****

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A bird hops around, pecking at the crumbs in front of Nicky’s feet, and he gazes down at it softly. 

****

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“You’re pretty chill,” she blurts out. “Like, you’re very comforting. I feel easy talking to you even though I’m --” 

****

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His lip curves again, just like it did on the balcony. Not a full smile, but it’s still warm. “I know it’s overwhelming. I’m glad to help you. All of us are.” 

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“Not even two weeks ago, I --” 

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“I know, and I am so sorry. And we are so happy to have you with us.” The waiter brings their coffees, and Nicky thanks him. He pours some cream into his, and then he watches Nile spoon some sugar into hers. “There’s no way to prepare oneself for this until it happens. And it all happens for a reason even if we will never know why.” 

****

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“Back in high school, when they asked where I saw myself in ten years, I would not have pictured _this_ ,” and she waves her hands out, “at all. I probably would have believed someone saying that I would be abducted by aliens and turned into a bodysnatcher even more than what’s happening to me now.” 

****

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“Hm,” Nicky says, with his quiet laugh. “When I first died and was reborn, I was just as overwhelmed and confused. I was furious this other unkillable man kept killing me, but that turned out to be the best blessing. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Some things that seem terrible can be helpful in the end.” 

****

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“I mean I’m glad Andy found me when she did. I don’t like to think what would have happened if she hadn’t.” She takes a sip, and she sighs. “I’d like to think that everything happens for a reason and so and so, but I can’t stop wondering why it was _me_. Why did I die that day? What if I died later --” 

****

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“Your first night with us. If you had not had your dream of Quynh,” Nicky starts, “at the moment you did, then we would have all been still asleep and defenseless when our home was breached. All of us would be captured and betrayed. You died around the time of our first betrayal by Copley--” 

****

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“Can you fill me in on that please? I’d like to be up to speed, and Andy only said that “he fucking set us up a few days ago” when I had asked the first time.” She takes another sip. “What happened?” 

****

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“Booker and Copley arranged a meeting in Morocco. Copley sent us on a set-up mission to rescue kidnapped children in South Sudan. We breached the compound, and in turn, we were killed on a streaming camera. The video Copley recorded of us was sent to Merrick. Booker facilitated it all.” 

****

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“Do you think that when I came into the picture, he would have --” 

****

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“That’s a question you’ll have to ask him one day,” Nicky says firmly. “I don’t speculate when it comes to that.” Nicky sighs. “Forgive me if I’ve come across harshly.” 

****

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“Were there actually kidnapped children?” Nile asks softly. 

****

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Nicky swallows hard. “We are too late for that now,” he says. “We settled on a hundred years not just for our suffering, Nile.” He sighs again. “So many things lose value. But some things appreciate with time that when they’re stolen from you, it’s devastating. Trust and faith, in this case.” 

****

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Nile frowns. “I’m sorry. It’s too early for all of this. We can talk about something else.” 

****

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“It’s good to talk, Nile. A fresh wound needs bandages more so than when it's healed over.” He drinks his coffee. His burner phone drums against the table. “We are family. It’s better to talk than to hide it and dwell.” He flips it open and smiles. “Joe will be joining us shortly.” 

****

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“Andy’s still in bed?” 

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“Undoubtedly. She’s still healing in more ways than one.” He crinkles the napkin in his lap. 

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“Is she okay, though? For real? With Booker and her loss of immortality aside? You’d know better than me,” Nile asks. “She was pretty sluggish in Antwerp. Just lying in bed and eating and lecturing me about _the stupid evolution of English grammar_ while she polishes her labrys. How would we even get that thing on a plane, anyway?” 

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Nicky bites the inside of his cheek. “She may not have struck you as a talkative person at first. In the same way it’s a pleasure to be honest about my age and real self with you, I think Andy takes great joy in getting to, uh, for lack of a better word, purge out centuries of musings to a new set of ears. She talked Booker’s ear off, too.” 

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“So, she isn’t, I don’t know, trying to teach me everything before she, you know, _leaves_?” 

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Nicky shrugs. “I can’t say for certain. She is an open book at times, and she’s a book that’s constantly expanding and rewriting. I can’t always keep track with her, either, and we’ve been a family for almost a thousand years.” 

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After a moment of not-awkward but not-comfortable silence, Nile asks, “So if we are family, now…” 

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“Yes?” 

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“So I’m your sister?” 

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“If you’d like to be.” 

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“And you’re my brother now, then.” 

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“Yes.” 

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“So, you and Joe are technically my brothers? You are each other’s brother?” 

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Nicky snorts this time, and Nile’s glad to see him laugh. “If you’d like to see it that way, I can’t stop you,” he says, smiling. 

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Nile blinks hard and shakes her head. “No. I have one brother, and he’s not you or Joe. I’ll consider you two like my uncles or cousins.” Her lip wobbles. “But again, I’d like to have a family that I can still -- It’s so hard. I miss my family, and I want to fit into this one, as well.” 

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“We can use ‘family’ in a more metaphorical sense,’ sure,” Nicky says softly. “I’ll still view you like my own sister, if that is alright. Andy and Quynh would always call me and Yus…” he drifts off. “I was the youngest one of the group for a while. Joe’s barely older than me. The three of them took serious, unending pleasure in reminding me that I was the ‘baby’ so to speak. Booker died at an age biologically older than both Joe and me, so it didn’t feel right to refer to him like such when he joined us. But you, Nile, you are our baby of the group. Our little sister. Our fearsome, dear sister.” 

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Nile’s eyes were wet, so Nicky kindly offered a handkerchief because of course he had one.

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“Nile, what did Nicky say?” Joe asks, half-joking and half-concerned, approaching the table. “Darling, it’s not even eight and you’ve already bored her to tears.” 

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Nile laughs a wet, deep laugh that feels like a burden lifted from holding down her heart and flies out through her throat. “No, it’s fine.” She dabs at her eyes. “I needed that.”

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**A is for *Asshole Numero Uno***

They get the call from Copley on an evening walk in the city.

Andy’s self-contained house in Budakalász was close enough to the Danube, and they took most evening strolls or bike rides along it. Andy got a new itch to leave Hungary for maybe Switzerland or Norway, and she wanted to dine out in the city for what might be the last time before she made up her mind. 

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Sadly, the bakery inspiring Andy’s return to Budapest had either closed or “wait, it might actually have been in Bratislava. Hm. Somewhere on the Danube. Oh well.” 

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Andy seemed in better spirits than in Antwerp. Nicky tended to her entry and exit wounds each morning and night, insisting they were healing properly. She wasn’t lying in bed all day though she did engage Nile and whoever else was in the room with an impromptu lecture, for example: the merits of certain blade-smithing techniques, whether the wine in a cave in Spain she’s had there since 1770 drinkable, or why Roman roads sucked ass. 

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Nicky and Joe were homebodies, but they joined Nile on her bike rides and ventures in sightseeing. 

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Nile still felt out of place. A green banana on a bunch of ripened ones. She wondered if the room she was staying in had been Booker’s. It was frustrating to walk in on conversations taking place in Italian or Greek or Arabic, and that they’d switch to English for her sake. It wasn’t their fault she felt mismatched. It wasn’t exactly her fault either. 

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She didn’t know how to deal with the lingering sense of imposter syndrome without ignoring it all together with distractions. 

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_I’m gonna go on a bike ride. I’m not gonna think about my mom and brother on the other side of the world. I’m not gonna think about the fact I’m living with three strangers-but-not-really? ancient beings where our one common denominator is that we can’t die (or at least 75% of us anyway.) I’m not going to think about how when I fall off my bike and skin my knee that the damage will be gone in under a minute. Nope. I’m not going to think about any of that. I’m going to ride my bike._

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So the prospect of packing up to a new location and spot of scenery was welcomed by Nile. 

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Except, it seemed like Nile held a monkey’s paw because she’s going somewhere new but not for the reason she’d hope. 

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Andy had stopped to admire one bakery’s display through the window as Nicky and Joe dawdled behind, Joe’s tucked into Nicky’s. They were so obliviously enamored with each other they almost bumped right into Andy, who gave them an exasperated glare as she flipped open the phone. 

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“Yeah?” she says. Her brows dip, and she brings the phone closer to her ear and hisses. “You’re positive? Absolutely positive? Great. Okay, fine. Email me.” She slams the phone shut. “Asshole Numero Uno has been spotted in the New World.” 

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“What?” Nile asks. 

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“Kosak apparently hides in America,” Nicky explains. “He will send us the intelligence.” 

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“Mm,” Andy grunts. “Fuck, and I was just getting settled to this time zone.” 

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“We’ve been here a week already, Andy,” Joe says with amused concern. 

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“I have a fragile body, Joe,” she says back. “Time is an illusion to me now.” 

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“Right, right,” Nile says. “We’re going back to the US?” 

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Andy shrugs, and she stops in front of another restaurant to read the menu plastered on the door. “If she’s in the US, then yeah. We have some business to finish with her.” She turns away from the menu and resumes walking. 

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The thought of going back to America soothes a numb ache in Nile’s chest, but it also stabs deep in her gut. She’ll be back in the US, but she won’t get to go home. So close to her family, yet she’ll have to stay away. 

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“Nile, my laptop has the emails for our pilot friends. Can you reach out. You’ll be better with the encryption shit,” Andy says, not turning around. “Unless you can find an airline that will let me have my labrys in the seat next to mine. Wouldn’t want her to get damaged getting checked.” 

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Andy’s delegated most tech-savvy endeavors to Nile, like finding a restaurants menu online to torrenting a movie from 1952 she can’t find anywhere else. 

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She doesn’t know if they want her to fill in Booker’s shoes. Or eventually Andy’s when Booker rejoins them in a century and Andy’s most likely passed. She knows she is the little sister, but she wants to take the reins but step back at the same time.

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Basically, she doesn’t know what she wants or what they want, really. 

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Andy stops and peruses the menu of another restaurant before nodding and corralling Nile and the boys into the reception before her. “Let’s enjoy this while we can,” Andy says blankly. “No reprieve ever lasts.”

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	2. Two to Three Weeks Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not a Party in the USA. The oldest people ever are not acting like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely fanart again by [ Lina!](https://linaxart.tumblr.com)
> 
> Canon typical depictions of violence and gore throughout the chapter.

**P is for *Pent Up Anger***

“And we’re certain it’s her,” Nile asks, tying her boots. Her seatbelt is abnormally tight, so she has to lift her knee up to the seat. “Not some other lady scientist?” 

She knows the answer to the question; she reviewed Copley’s email herself. That woman in the photos is indeed the same bitch Nile knocked out cold. Nile knows it’s Kosak. She just wants to break the awkward silence permeating the car. 

“We got to know Kosak very intimately, Nile,” Joe says tiredly from the passenger seat. He says it like a teacher answering the same question over and over again even though the answer it’s in the fucking syllabus’s fine print. “She hovered over the two of us for three days. Could tell if it’s her even if you showed just a picture looking up her nose.” 

Nicky clears his throat and continues counting the boxes of ammunition in the duffle bag on his lap. 

“Okay,” Nile acquiesces, and she rubs the sweat off her forehead. The old sedan they’re driving is very cramped and has no air conditioning. Even with the windows rolled down and Andy driving down a dirt road like some racecar, it’s stuffy. 

And with current vibes bouncing off Andy, Nicky, and Joe are a molten hot pinball dinging between ice cold bumpers. Coiled up springs that keep winding up tighter and tighter before snapping then curling back up. 

This is not a fun car ride. 

Andy emphatically indicates her turn signal even though they’re the only living things on this road for miles. “Look, even if Kosak’s not holed up there nor are the samples, we at least need to check out the lead. The smartass hasn’t been trying to hide, frankly.” 

According to Copley, Post-Merrick research she’s been conducting that’s reaped her a fortune. Enough to take up in the middle of fucking nowhere with protection for a few weeks at least. 

Joe snorts. “I’m almost impressed that she managed to get both herself and the parts of _ourselves_ out of the building before the authorities arrived. With a serious concussion, nonetheless.” Nicky clears his throat again. “We can’t underestimate her.” 

“Yeah, no shit,” Andy snides. “Do you think we are driving to meet our weapons dealer for some coffee and a chat?” 

Joe scoffs. “I did, actually. Haven’t seen him in a while. I missed him.” Nicky coughs into his fist, and Joe looks in the rearview mirror to meet his blank glance. He hefts a put upon sigh and looks out the window, curls whipping in the wind. “I didn’t think our current trip has anything to do with the suitcase of cash in the trunk.” 

Andy purses her lips and readjusts her sunglasses. “Well, since you missed him, I’ll let you lead the exchange.” 

“How magnanimous of you.” Joe crosses his arms. 

Nicky adds, “I did not miss him. I don’t like this man.” 

Andy rolls her eyes. “Sorry, it hadn’t crossed my mind to reach out to all the other dealers in the area that have explosives on hand for a last minute meeting. Because there are so many of them.” 

Nile taps her foot and wipes her brow again. She’s tempted for a moment to unlock the door and roll out of the car just to get a breather from this claustrophobic lock-of-horns in which the world’s three oldest, supposedly most mature people are bundled up in a high-school level triangle of moodiness. 

The bickering’s been going on between the three of them since Copley confirmed a sighting of Kosak a few days before. 

What had been a sweet, doting, and almost obnoxiously endearing couple morphed into stone cold faces and blank stares. 

They were speaking in passive aggressive circles, looping back to abandoned arguments Nile was not even alive for, giving cold shoulders, ignoring direct questions, casting major side-eye, and making snide noises of objection. 

She didn’t know _why_ they were acting like this. You’d think the oldest couple ever would have all kinks worked out, but maybe back in the Middle Ages they decided, “Hey beloved’-th, we shouldeth randomly get mean-eth to each other just to keep things spicy-eth.” 

Maybe it was because of Copley’s phone call. Maybe they were mad to be back in the US? Maybe they were mad about the prospect of seeing Kosak? But why were they mad at each other? 

Maybe, before Nile was even in the picture, there was some pent-up anger, and now it’s come to blow up? Or if London was the blow up, maybe this is the smaller, less satisfying sequel that Nile’s forced to watch play out in front of her. 

Who fucking knows. 

What she knows, is that she’s in the middle of it. Watching just out-of-bounds. 

Nicky and Joe... they’ve been like two hornets hovering around a nest with each other for the past _week._ Andy’d been sucked into their vacuum of awkward silences and clipped responses on the plane ride over. Their feelings are contagious in the way their pleasant attitudes are; NickyandJoe in a standoff -- one that is half-spoken in a language she can’t understand and half-relayed in gestures she most definitely gets the gist of-- leads to Andy, Joe, and Nicky in a frayed knot of personal jabs and icy stares. Nile dreadfully assumes that she’ll get twisted up in this clusterfuck soon enough. 

Hopefully, finding closure with Kosak and destroying the samples will release some of the buildup that’s been festering since Copley confirmed a sighting in Midwest America. 

“So. What are we going to do with her?” Nile broaches. 

“Nicky? Joe?” Andy poses. She’d insisted they be the ones to determine her fate as they had suffered the most at her hands. “Verdict?” 

“For now, I want the samples to be destroyed. I will have plenty of time to hunt her down after,” Nicky says calmly. 

“That’s not an answer, Nicky.” 

“I don’t have an answer. But if we know she is there, then someone else must. She will not be there long.”

“Still not an answer,” Andy chaffs. “Joe?” 

“I am still partial to leaving her at the door of one of the many agencies with a warrant for her arrest.”

“Yes, and she can then sing as a canary in hopes of clemency to some agents, and we’ll then be tracked down by the full forces of agencies,” Nicky says. “Either we take her alive, or we finish her there.”

“I don’t think there’d be enough room for--” 

“She’d go in the trunk,” Andy snaps, but then she winces and meets Nile’s eyes in the rearview mirror in a soft apology. “And she’d stay in the trunk until we knew what we would do.” 

Nile swallows. “Okay. Got it.” For the rest of the ride, she keeps her head adamantly turned away so they can’t see the buzz with frustration settling onto her face. 

They pull up to a rundown farmhouse where Joe’s BeMissed is waiting in his pickup truck, a large box strapped down in the tail. Andy and Joe get out, and Nile and Nicky sweat in the backseat. Nicky’s eyes are peeled on the three, but he manages to blindly grab a small unwrapped box from the duffle bag and pass it to Nile without looking. 

He says, “These are the ear devices Copley sent. Will you check them?” 

She tears the plastic and opens the thick white packaging. After reading the little booklet, she counts and inspects the four tiny comm devices, their holding cases. She plugs a charging port into the cigarette lighter and watches one case’s blinking light shift from red to green. She switches them out. 

“Are you okay?” she asks carefully, slotting another set into the case. 

“I am okay,” Nicky says, watching Joe and Andy check out the explosive device. 

Nile considers her words before asking, “If we take her with us, what will happen to her?” 

Nicky exhales. “We would interrogate her for information until she has none left to give us.” 

“And then she’d be --”

“Yes, Nile.” 

“Okay. Got it,” Nile responds, face hot. She can’t tell if she’s embarrassed for being so naive or of the fact she’d knocked Kosak out instead of giving her the same treatment she’d given every other opposition she faced in Merrick’s building or if she’s overwhelmed that-- 

“We don’t usually seek revenge so to speak,” Nicky starts, and he relaxes minutely as Joe and Andy walk back to the car to retrieve the suitcase. “It is one thing to kill or hurt on a job or when you have to. It’s another to seek out a particular life to take.” 

“No, no. It’s personal. I get it.” She finishes charging the devices, and she puts them each in their own case. All four together are less clunky than a single walkie-talkie, so they fit in her pocket. 

“I wouldn’t say ‘personal’ is the best word. If it was personal, I’d have brought a knife or sword with me. Airport security be damned.” Nicky frowns. “We are not cruel. Whatever we do will be professional.” He exhales and continues calmly, “You were talking with Booker outside when we told Andy the more invasive tests she performed on us.” He swallows. “For example, with a scalpel she bissected him right next to me. No anesthetics. Then, I could hear the saw breaking his ribs. She carved out a piece of his heart, Nile. And she did the same to me while Joe watched as helplessly as I watched him. She conducted other violations that are too graphic or excessive for me to tell you right now because I’ve made my point.” He blinks, but his eyes are still firmly locked on the exchange. “She hurt my family deliberately and remorselessly. She hurt _Joe_.” 

Nile’s mouth feels like cotton. “I’m sorry. I am really, really sorry you two went through that.” 

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Nicky promises. “Absolvation means we may take another step forward.” He looks away briefly to spare her a small smile. “A bumpy road is still a road.” 

Andy and Joe carry the explosive device to the trunk, and Andy haggles another two pistols from the man before they hand over the briefcase. They wait until he’s driven away before they return to the car. Nicky relaxes back against the seat, no longer concerned with observing them. 

They’re settling back into their seats when Andy’s phone buzzes. She cranks up the car, and she hands the phone over to Joe. “It’s Copley.” 

He flips it open and answers with a dull, “Yes?” Nile can barely hear the tinny response on the other line, and Joe’s brows furrow. “Right now? We--” 

Andy snatches the phone back, and she fixes it between her ear and shoulder as she shifts into drive. “What is it?” Her mouth furls into a flat line. “Are you fucking kidding me?” 

“Would someone please clue us in?” Nile asks from the backseat. “Hello?” Andy snaps her fingers, and she puts a finger up. It reminds Nile of her mom shooing her way when she was on the phone. 

Andy snaps the phone shut. “We have to go to Kosak’s last confirmed location now. Two other agencies are infiltrating in less than two hours. He just found out by some former CIA friend. Both MI6 and CIA.” 

Nicky rolls off a string of curses. “We do not have enough--” he protests. 

“It’s going to have to be,” Andy says back. “We’ve done bigger jobs with way less.” 

“Can we call our friend back?” Nicky suggests. 

“We should have packed better,” Joe says, very directly-indirectly calling out Nicky. 

“I packed enough security for an exchange. I was under the impression we would strike tomorrow.”

“For once, your paranoid tendencies would have suited us. The one time you didn’t stock up like some doomsday planner as you always do, we’re going to have to just make do with what we have,” Joe snarks, checking the magazine of the pistol he’s tucked in his belt. 

“Forgive me, I didn’t know I was the only one responsible for packing. And was it not last night when you said I need to ‘kindly remove the stick I had shoved up your ass’ and let you handle your own things because you are ‘a fucking adult who doesn’t’--” 

“Enough!” Andy snaps. “Not now. Let’s save our anger for what’s at hand. If you have any left over after, then feel free to continue this soap opera.” 

Nile swallows. “We will be okay,” she says softly. “We have these comm devices. I just charged them up. They’ll help.”

  
**F is for *Fuck Around and Find Out***

They don’t help. 

Everything goes to shit quickly. 

Kosak is not at the compound as they’d hoped. After breaching the perimeter and clearing out hired guns surrounding the building, they found the samples on the top story of the run-down office building that she’d repurposed into her new headquarters. 

The whole area is a ghost town; a town once filled with promise where only flowers sprouting through the cracks of discarded roads are what thrives. The advantage of not worrying about civilians is that your presence is quickly noticed because literally nothing else is going on. 

Yet, the men Kosak was paying to watch her stash were underprepared for their attack, and it was no surprise. Some of them parked their fucking cars in the beat-down parking lot to the side of the building. Nile had never really thought of that before; did they all carpool together? Rideshare? Was a hired gun using a car registered to his name for work purposes? 

Anyway. 

The clusterfuck goes as follows: 

Joe and Andy assembled the bomb in the lab once Nicky and Nile confirmed the many fridges contained body parts and vials. The plaster white walls were covered with research rivaling Copley’s obsession, but these photos were snapshots of Joe and Nicky’s many autopsies. And the other photos…

“She is a sick fuck,” Nile had said, wincing despite herself after looking into a fridge where other sets of eyeballs stared right back at her. One of the eyes was undoubtedly Nicky’s; she knew the yellowish blue iris anywhere. “Let’s fucking blow this popsicle stand.” 

“We will. We just need a few more minutes,” Andy’d asserted, helping Joe rearrange some wires. “Can you two stand watch? Make sure we don’t have any more company coming? Governmental or not.” 

Nicky’d checked one of his guns’ magazines, and then he sighed. “Nile, you start in the front. I’ll start in the back.” 

They had barely reconvened in the middle of their scouting the area when they were struck down. The shooter shot at a long distance if the many little balls Nile had to push out of her skin was any indicator. 

When she came to, there were three black vans parked in front of the building, and the last few men from each were piling inside. 

She rolled over slowly to find Nicky pushing himself up from the pavement with a wince, a fragment of a bullet seeping out of his cheek. 

The second reinforcement did not know about Nicky and Nile’s advantage because no one tried to secure them or pump another round of bullets in them. 

“They’re still up there,” Nicky grunted, jutting his chin up the direction of the building’s top floor. “Andy’s stuck in there with the bomb, Nile.” 

“Then we gotta get her down,” Nile had said, and she wobbled onto her feet. She’d dropped her gun when she was shot, so she bent down to check it. 

She’d pressed the comm button of the device. “Joe, Andy we’re okay. We’ll try to clear a way out for you two. They came out of nowhere. Three vans full. Not all of them are geared up.” 

Joe answered, “Fuck. Okay.” 

The two managed to take out a fair amount of the new mercs, but it wasn’t enough. 

"Okay, _now_ , I'm out, fuck" Nile curses, dropping the empty magazine. They've got nothing. “Should we head back to the car at least and--” 

Joe's voice is tinny on the other end. "Andy’s gonna need to start heading down to you. I'm almost done setting up the rig. I can give you five minutes until I’ve got to send her down. Andy, please, don’t be reckless, get away from the door!” 

“Understood.” Nile curses again. “There’s what, twenty? Twenty five waiting for them?” she tells Nicky as though he didn’t know that too. “We can’t send her the okay just yet.” 

“And we cannot have her stay too close to the bomb,” Nicky says, and he starts prowling around the lot, scanning over the cars, and taking stock of what he can see through the windows. "We must find something else to use. Look around.” 

“Here,” she calls after checking out one trunk, and Nicky heads over, checks out her finding, nods, slams his shoulder against the rearview window, feels around for the inner lock through the broken glass, and unlatches the hatch. As he shakes off the glass splintering from his hand, she tosses a metal baseball bat to Nicky and breaks off the head of a lacrosse stick for herself to fashion it into a makeshift spear. 

“Thank you.” He tosses the bat from one hand to the other, feeling its weight. “Hm. This works,” he decides, and he spins the handle in his hand. 

"After you," she says, staring back at the basement door, knowing there's at least ten mercs waiting for them to breach on that side. Into her mic, she adds, "Joe, we're going in from the basement. Don’t send her down just yet. We’ll try to meet her in the lobby. Over." 

As she clicks off the comm button, she steps inside the basement to Nicky’s carnage, the bloody pulps leftover of those that fucked around and found out. 

  


Watching the calm and sweet Nicky pummel and swing deadly blows and hearing the crunch of the bat meeting bone is a very not-shocking-but-still-unsettling experience. He wields it so gracefully, balances it like his sword, and his aim is sure and devastating even while he’s taking bullets to the chest and arms. 

For a brief moment, she imagines Nicky with a fucking _light sabre_ , the whooshing and searing of the blade. Maybe they’ll live to see a day when a weapon like that is a real thing. If so, she also hopes spaceships are a thing because what’s the point of glowy danger-sticks if she’s limited to using them on earth? 

“To your left!” Nicky yells to her, and she stabs the merc that comes at her. “Your stick isn’t going to be sharp enough for long. Pick up what you can.” He’s not stopping, apparently. And honestly, Nile doesn’t think he needs to at the rate and rage he’s going after the mercs. “Please bring me one. I’m about to go up.” 

Their communication isn’t as rock solid as she’d been with her own crew or as NickyJoeAndy are. Obviously, of course. Joe and Nicky can have full-ass conversations without saying a single word, and Andy has her own way of just doing whatever she wants without clueing in anyone else. They all have a rhythm that Nile’s not up to beat with. And they’re yet to match Nile, too. 

Andy gets a little impatient with Nile or with her new limitations. Joe’s used to having someone on his six, but Nile’s not adapted to his style of fighting to sync with him.

Nicky’s the closest to what she used to have. He’s very direct, remains kind without coddling, and he helps only if he knows she needs it. 

She takes and loads a few pistols from the victims Nicky’s left behind. She hands him two guns and two clips as she makes it to the staircase where he’s waiting for her. 

“I seem to have misplaced my earpiece,” Nicky informs her, tapping his lobe. His face is covered in blood and mush. The eyes she so usually sees as calm and soft are fierce and fiery. He has a curl to his upper lip. “Thank you,” he says, checking the guns over. He drops the bat with a clink carelessly. He’s not even out of breath. 

They are killed by and kill at least fifteen mercs that’d been waiting for them to come up. One scraggler tries to race up the stairs, but Nile shoots his legs and he tumbles back down. 

“Hey!” they can hear Andy call from the upper floor. “Sounds manageable to me. I’m going down.” 

Joe says over the comms, “She lost her earpiece. Get her out of here. Don’t worry about me, okay? She is the priority. We have five minutes till the second switch goes off. Over.” 

“10-4.” She relays the message to Nicky: “We have five minutes.” 

“Hm,” Nicky responds, reloading. “I don’t like leaving him here.” 

“Let’s get Andy to the car first,” she decides, and Nicky nods. 

“Yes,” he confirms, and he wipes a swear of blood off his cheek before unlatching the safety. 

Andy shoots her way down to the main floor, but she gets grazed in the side. Another merc lands a few punches, but she knocks him out. “I’m so pissed I didn’t bring my girl,” she seethes, watching the merc tumble down the stairs. There’s a blooming red spot seeping through her shirt.

Nicky and Nile cover her until she’s able to be covered and out the door. Nile goes after her first, helping her as she lets herself limp in pain. “It’s not bad. Just a scrape,” she insists. 

“Yeah, just don’t go somersaulting or parkour until Nicky’s looked at it, yeah?” she says, knocking out a few stragglers that are limping their way from the basement. 

Nicky follows them out, watching their backs as they rush down to the wooded area they parked. 

When Andy’s settled in the front seat, Nile exhales deeply. Nicky’s still standing at the edge of the woods, looking up the path. His foot is tapping. 

She counts the seconds down and stands behind him, not sure what to do. She presses her comm and hears nothing but static on the other end. She calls out to him twice with no response. 

After the third try, Nicky turns around and tells her, “I’m going back for him.” 

“Wait! Let me try again! ” She presses her comm button a little too roughly again to insist, “Joe? Joe, can you hear me?” 

“Nile-- can hear you--trying to say--change of plans,” Joe says into the earpiece. The audio is fizzy. “Timer--dead. Moscow ‘23.” 

She tells Nicky, “He said there’s been a change of plans. The timer is dead? Moscow ‘23. What does that mean?” 

Nicky blanches. He pivots and bolts up the path without another word. 

Andy rolls down the window. “What the fuck is going on?” 

“Joe said something about Moscow '23. The timer died? Apparently he’d been trying to reach me, but the earpiece wouldn’t pick up.”

“Oh shit, he has to manually--” Andy curses right as Joe’s voice cackles back to life in her ear. “I just manually -- off so I’ll - to get out fast -- but -- less -- seconds now.”

“Joe, Nicky’s coming to you,” Nile warns, eyes widening. 

“No, there’s not --- ime-- Nic---hear me? Ni-- turn around-- Ni-- now!” 

“He doesn’t have his earpiece,” Nile tells him. He doesn’t have his ear piece. So she screams out, hoping he’s close enough to hear her say, “Nicky, come back! Come back! 

“Fuck, I’m --” Joe laments in her ear. She hears a faint beep crescendo louder and louder. 

“Nile get in the car!” Andy yells, rolling the window up.

“Nicky, turn around!” 

Then she sees, no feels the explosion.

The debris rains, the smoke suffocates, and the chaos is palpable even from their safe distance. Nile blindly reaches for the handle and unlatches it just as her eyes start to water.

“Fuck. Fuck. Okay. Just give them a few minutes,” Andy insists, coughing into her elbow as she turns on the vent. "Moscow ‘23. That's a story for another time." 

"Yeah." Nile's not keen to hear the details now, but she’s got the gist. 

“It’s not a fun one.” 

For a moment, she considers asking Andy how they heal from explosions -- how does the body heal when splattered and disconnected? How do the limbs regrow? She swallows the question in her throat and instead hums her understanding. 

Fifteen minutes later, Joe’s sauntering out of the dust with Nicky leaning on his side. They’re not looking too hot-- no well, Joe’s hair has most definitely been on fire and their clothes are singed and -- 

“His leg is taking too long,” Joe supplies gruffly, yanking the car door open and fitting them into the back. “We are okay.” 

Andy shifts gears. “I thought I was the reckless one?” she mutters as they drive off. 

“Well, today,” Joe starts, soothing at Nicky’s side even though his tone is annoyed and his eyes flash with fury and fear. His eyelashes had been burnt off with his eyebrows and patches of his beard, and Nile could see the gradual shadow of hair regrow. “You’re outmatched.” he kisses Nicky’s bloodied temple softly. His face is hard. Nile turns to face the front. 

“We can fight later,” Nicky mumbles, and Nile can hear Joe’s soft sigh. A brief look from the rear view mirror shows them staring at each other, excruciatingly close. Nicky’s gripping Joe’s shoulders as Joe clutches him tight. “I know we’ve been…” 

“Shh,” Joe whispers. 

Nicky swallows hard. “Just hold me for now.”

She really prefers to be left out of personal conflicts -- no matter how deserved -- if it’s not her place to chime in. Joe and Nicky are good without her input. 

The half-hour drive back to the safe-farmhouse reminds her of one dreadful busride during training where they had been smoked and chewed out, and the bus was silent as they awaited further smoking and chewing out. Nile’s not even in trouble. No one is, really? It’s just that there’s an argument that’s been simmering and it’s not going to be pleasant when it reaches the boiling point. 

The adrenaline burning and the tense vibes are too highs she's not willing to endure, so Nile dials up the radio and tries to fall asleep.

**H is for *Hot Water***

As they clamber inside, she watches Joe herd Nicky to the single bathroom. Usually one of them would ask if they could take the first shower, but today, they're pulling an Andy and just taking it. 

“If you have headphones,” Andy starts mildly, beelining to the kitchen and filling up a mug of cold coffee, “I would recommend you use them now.” She takes a thoughtful sip then puts the cup in the microwave. So nonchalantly she presses a button and muses, “unless, of course, you don’t mind hearing --”

“Got it!” Nile answers, and she makes haste to the room she’s sharing with Andy and promptly buries herself under the covers while blindly searching for the tangled up headphones she’d left on the bedside table.

\-- 

Andy flops down on the couch with her hot drink and rubs at the crick in her neck. There’s a bottle of ibuprofen Nicky very unsubtly alerted her to after a grocery run yesterday. It’s still centered on the counter, but she’d prefer a hot drink and a hotter shower before she takes a dose. 

She laughs at a quick joke that pops into her mind, of Joe and Nicky being in hot water with each other. Their pissy attitude hopefully ends today. It can come back when they actually locate the Asshole Numero Uno, but now Andy just wants everyone to chill the fuck out. 

Maybe she should take that ibuprofen. 

_Or, if Nicky could find me some old cocaine laced painkillers of Ye Old Days, that’d work._

“So,” she tells the lip of her mug, waiting for the pipes to squeak. “I’ll give them till the end of the first commercial break when the water’s on.” She flicks to a game show and drinks her coffee.

\-- 

“Darling,” Nicky says very tersely, plucking charred brains from his hair. “I’m not even going to start with how we shouldn’t have rushed the job because we were obviously woefully underprepared.” 

“You would have preferred Kosak being shipped off to Vauxhall, Nico?” Joe snarks back, inspecting the slow regrowth of his facial hair in the mirror. “Hypothetically, even? That our samples be handed to some agency that could hunt us down just like--” 

“We should not have bought a bomb from that asshole. We shouldn’t have used a bomb at all It’s almost as though we shouldn’t have used the fucking thing because it obviously was not properly constructed." He flicks the matter off his hands into the sink, his mouth a hard line. 

Joe scoffs, gingerly picking the burnt and bloodied shirt plastered to his chest off and over his head to a placid thunk on the bathroom tile. “ _Baby_ , did you dislodge your ear piece that would have told you I had to resort to manual detonation last minute? That the timer was fucking up? So you should not have been in the area.” 

Nicky yanks off his own blood-soaked shirt and tossed it on top of Joe’s with a wet flop. "We should address the fact you would have been, regardless if I went back for you--" 

"If you had stayed with Nile and Andy, you wouldn’t have--” 

“Been blown up, darling? Like you were?” 

Joe stares at him, and Nicky stares back. It’s a heated look, but not the preferred kind. 

Nicky looks away first, and peels out of what’s left of his socks and shoes. Joe follows suit, kicking off the boots barely hanging onto his feet. 

“My love, if you could have keep track of your fucking ear piece for once --" Joe says, tossing his socks away. 

“Our communication has always been a great strength of ours. We have managed centuries without earpieces and bombs--” 

Joe kicks out of his pants, watching Nicky yank open the glass door and dial up the shower. “Well, babe, perhaps you’ve neglected to adapt to the changing times.” 

“Oh?” Nicky steps out of the remnants of his pants and undergarments.“If you’d rather we live like we did before, go boil some water and find a basin. And some soap made of fat. _Darling_.” 

Andy bangs on the door. “For fuck's sake. Can you two just hate-fuck already? There better be hot water left for me.” 

Joe and Nicky freeze for a moment, suspended in their anger. 

Nicky breaks the momentary stillness by saying back, “Andy, you should be resting. Go watch _Jeopardy!_ on the couch.” 

“Watching _Wheel of Fortune_. You have until the end of the episode to get on with it before I break the door down and join.” She could be bluffing but there was that one winter when… yeah best not to risk it. 

Joe snorts, remembering the same mishap as Nicky. His face softens. 

“Let’s get in, okay?” he offers, reopening the steaming door. 

“So we can hate-fuck?” Nicky asks back carefully. He steps in and sighs under the hot stream. 

“I could never do such a thing. I love you too much,” Joe insists, closing the door behind them. 

“We…,” Nicky starts, slathering himself with soap and scrubbing at the dried blood on his arms. “We have not been acting like it. Since that night in Budapest.” 

“I know.” 

“I don’t understand why. It’s not just you that became…”

“Unpleasant?” Joe muses, drizzling body wash into his hands. “I think we had been recovering from what happened. Spending time with our family. It was a harsh wakeup call. A quick reminder to what had happened before.” 

“And how helpless we were then,” Nicky adds. 

Arguing and fighting is no stranger to their relationship. They’ve _killed_ each other, so any sour week filled with passive aggression and cold shoulders is nothing in comparison. 

“We can talk about it later,” Nicky says. 

“Let’s talk now. We can make up for some lost time tonight instead.” 

Nicky smiles. “Fuck the rest of our pent-up anger out?” 

“Mm. But we’ll have to talk quickly. Unless we want Andy to join us.” 

“She has a right to. We dragged her down, too.” 

Joe scoffs. “That woman has looped us into such much drama over the centuries. But yes, we can have a heart-to-heart with Andy later. But now in the shower and certainly not until we’re done with each other tonight.” 

“Tonight?” Nicky licks a drop of water rolling down Joe’s cheek. “I might need until tomorrow morning.”

**N is for *Napoli***

Joe and Nicky are in a strangely sweet mood in the morning. Nile reaches back through her brain’s rolodex of pop culturally appropriate reactions and all she can conjure is the merit of the lesson from _Brooklyn Nine Nine_ about boning out frustration. It must be legit advice. 

“Here, darling,” Nicky says softly, placing a cup of coffee in front of Joe as he reads the morning paper.

“Thank you, dear,” Joe says, and he grabs Nicky’s palm and kisses it. 

Nile emphatically chugs her orange juice, trying not to stare. “Are we staying here?” she asks. “Or, could we at least?” 

Joe and Nicky look at each other. “We can’t stay in this location for long, no.” 

“Can we stay in the US at least?” Nile asks quietly. “I mean, sure I should go explore the rest of the world but I have forever to do that. I’ve missed being home.” 

The rural farmhouse is not anything like Nile’s childhood home, so to speak. But she feels at ease back on American soil, a relief she hasn’t felt since she shipped out to Afghanistan. 

“I don’t think we should go to Chicago,” Joe starts mildly. 

“We could go to California! Or New York! Maybe even Iowa, I don’t care.” 

“Let’s ask Andy,” Nicky insists. 

Andy doesn’t wake up for another two hours, so the conversation simmers. Nile tries to focus on the news program, Joe flips through the newspaper, and Nicky reads the pages Joe’s finished. 

“Forgot everyone likes to wake at the asscrack of dawn,” Andy grumbles. 

“Isn’t that Joe’s?” Nile observes out loud when Andy finally strolls into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes with the cuff of a Louvre gift-shop sweatshirt she recalls Joe wearing three days ago. 

“It’s Nicky’s,” she corrects, pouring some coffee. “We all trade clothes. Why should one person pack for a fortnight when three people can pack for four days each?” She taps her temple like Nile should be having a eureka moment. 

“If you were our size, we might be able to go with packing three days,” Andy says mournfully. 

“Sincerest apologies,” Nile deadpans. “But, you mean we’re only staying here for two weeks?” 

“Why, do you wanna leave now?” Andy asks, dolloping spoons of sugar into the mug. 

“No, I was hoping we could stay in the US for a while,” she says. 

“She’d like to go to New York, California, or Iowa,” Joe helpfully adds. 

Andy raises a brow. “Well, I know I have eight houses across the country. Nicky and Joe have six--” 

“Five; we sold our house in Georgetown,” Nicky corrects. 

“So we have thirteen options to try,” Andy figures. “You sure you don’t wanna go to Tokyo or Rome or --” 

“I’m homesick, Andy. I want to feel at home without going home, if that makes sense.” 

Andy nods, and she tilts her head back towards the living room so Nile will follow her. 

She perches into spot on the couch, blowing on the mug. “I remember being in Chicago for the Columbian Exposition back in what, 1895?” 

“1893,” Nicky corrects. 

“I miss Chicago. I miss walking down the street and knowing where I am. Taking the L. The lake during winter. Marquette. I miss recognizing streets and landmarks and shops. I miss so much,” Nile says, folding her hands in her lap. 

“I know you do,” Andy says softly. 

“Nicky’s not fond of Chicago,” Joe says, trying to lighten the mood.

“Excuse me?” Nicky scoffs. 

“You cursed the city when you tried your first deep dish pizza.” 

Nicky purses his lips. “I cannot recall that.” 

Andy snickers. “No, you did. You insisted on going back to Naples to cleanse your palate.” 

“Don’t disrespect the deep dish in my presence,” Nile warns playfully. “And ooh, I do love a stuffed pie from Nancy’s.”

Nicky grimaces. “Those are not pizzas, they are just cakes with tomato and cheese.”

“Don’t disrespect my people! What next, you put ketchup on your hotdog, Nicky?” 

“He doesn’t even like New York style,” Joe says. 

“I will not apologize for my sense of taste,” Nicky says. “Oh, but Nile, you must come with us to Napoli. Oh, dio, try a real pizza with mozzarella di bufala Campana and you can die happily,” Nicky insists. 

“They use water buffalo milk for the cheese,” Andy explains. 

“Uh,” Nile says warily. 

“Oh, because the starched pencil shavings you claim as mozzarella is better?” Nicky demands. She has not seen him so worked up over something trivial before, so it’s a bit amusing and a tad bit terrifying. 

“They do make good wine in Naples. Not sure about Chicago wine,” Andy reminisces. “By Mt. Vesuvius, they make this wine called Lacryma Christi, or ‘tears of Christ’ and god, it tastes so much like the good old days.” 

“Andy, Lykon, and Quyhn had been living in Naples and left a few months before the eruption,” Joe says. “It wasn’t Pompeii, it was--” 

“A modest village called Herculaneum. There were all those earthquakes, the sea was rising, but we all had no idea that Vesusvius would explode,” Andy recounts, shaking her head. “The top of the mountain was green. It was so fertile there. Now it looks like a deflated lava cake.” 

“Ah,” Nile says. “Good to know.” 

“Did they find your home in the ashes yet?” Joe asks. “I know you keep up with the excavation news.” 

“No, I don’t think I would be able to tell anyway. But, they did recently unearth a food stall we visited once. Lykon would get the duck, Quyhn the goat, and I’d get the snails. Seeing it was like whiplash. Don’t remember the people that ran it, but they were found in the rubble too.”

“Why did you leave?” Nile asks. 

“We were heading to Alexandria, I think. Can’t remember what for, though.” 

“Hm,” Nile considers. “I still want to stay in the US. We can go to Napoli another time.” 

“Herculaneum had the best figs in the whole world. Oh, and this one woman crafted the best plakous in Pompeii. Sometimes, when wanted to go to Pompeii for gambling and what not, Lykon and I would tell Quyhn we would walk there just for it,” Andy says, unconsciously licking her lips. 

“Plakous was the original placenta cake,” Nicky explains. “And no, placenta is derived from the word plakous. She was not actually eating afterbirth. It is a layered honey cake, perhaps one of the inspirations for baklava.” 

“Oh, god and they make amazing limoncello there,” Andy begins, and Nile sighs. “But, the lemons of Amalfi, don’t get me started.” 

“I’m afraid we’re too late,” Joe muses, as Andy dictates her very strict position on Amalfi lemons. 

**R is for *Road Rage***

“We have been sitting here for fifteen minutes!” Nicky tells Nile, as though he hadn’t been updating her for at the five, eight, ten, and twelve minute mark. Maybe she isn’t responding with appropriate rage, so he feels the need to remind her of his.

“Yeah,” Nile says back, crossing and uncrossing her legs to get more comfortable. It’s not like he’s wanting an answer, but more of an affirmation to his peril. “We have.” 

Nicky thunks his head against the headrest, and for a second he looks like he’s about to risk it all, swerve the car out of the line, and just plow right through the construction set up. Thankfully for Andy’s sake, he settles, thrumming his fingers against the steering wheel. 

Out of the trio of immortals Nile was growing accustomed to, she had assumed it would be Andy with the most severe case of road rage. 

This morning, as they began their journey north to a new safehouse, she had not given much though to Joe taking the back seat even though Nicky was in the driver’s seat. She didn’t know what was about to happen. She’d never been in a car with Nicky driving yet. She didn’t know. 

She didn’t know that drivers behind, in front of, and even fucking _parked_ could educe such vivid, visceral curses from Nicky behind the wheel. When they stopped for gas, she turned to Joe and insisted on driving the way back. 

Joe’d smiled at her kindly. Nicky’d given up his seat easily, and he settled in the passenger seat, closed his eyes, and dozed off. 

Nile’d relaxed, dialed up the radio a bit, but then Nicky woke from his nap---

She’s coming to see that Nicky has second-hand road rage and would curse the cars, the lights, and the crosswalks on Nile’s behalf. A

At their next stop for lunch, Joe takes one look at her bewildered expression as she stretches her legs, and he _cackles_ in delight. 

“You should have seen him back when we had carriages. Don’t get me started on ferries,” he tells her later when Nicky’s excused himself. “There’s a reason he typically sits in the back.” 

Joe finds it amusing. Endearing almost. 

She decides to give Nicky back the steering wheel because she’s not eager for another couple hours of Nicky ranting for her. 

Before they merge back on the highway, they hit a devastating obstacle. 

Nicky slams his fist against the steering wheel. “Repavement must be occurring now, yes?” he demands, gesturing emphatically at the blocked road and the long line of cars waiting for a turn to go.“Of all days! Of all hours they choose this time?” 

“Yes, dear,” Joe says from the safety of the backseat, “the city planner and the construction crew met up in advance and planned this to make sure they would inconvenience you.”

Nicky turns and gives a withering glare. 

Andy snoozes with her head against the window. 

Nile stares emphatically ahead. 

Joe grins. 

Well, Joe does make it a little more bearable. He’ll offer helpful translations to curses Nile doesn’t understand. “He’s cursing the driver of the white car and his mother and his mother’s mother.” “He thinks that the man who designed the roads’ layout is a dog-faced son of a whore.” “He’s saying that whoever is driving in that red sedan is a spawn of the devil and deserves eternal damnation if they’re driving the speed limit.” 

She’s relieved when they park outside a ranch-style house at the end of a long driveway. 

“Home sweet Missouri” Nicky says. “Damn its traffic.” 

“Hey now, this is a charming place,” Joe insists. “Well, a little colder than I thought it’d be.” 

“Still, the driving here could be better.” 

“Of course, dear,” Joe insists, helping Nicky unload the trunk. “I’m happy the only thing raising your blood pressure is the traffic. Let’s relax while we can, okay?” 

Nicky rebalances the weight of the bags flung over his arms, and he leans into kiss him. “No reprieve lasts. We shall try to make this one last.”


	3. The Estimate Birth Month

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's going good.

**E is for *Estimate Birth Month Celebrations***

“Can’t believe the Louisiana Purchase was for this,” Andy snarks, tossing the last of the grocery tote bags -- save the one holding her bag of candy and soda-- into the trunk. “I forget how cold and windy it is here. Suckers bought this place.”

“More like suckers stole this land and then sold it,” Nile corrects, returning from putting the cart back. 

“True, true,” Andy agrees. She cranks up the engine and tosses one of the sodas to Nile. 

“So why buy a house out here if you hate the weather?” 

“Two answers. One: I have places in every climate and continent besides Antarctica. Two: I didn’t. It’s Joe and Nicky’s. Ask them why they bought a few acres of rainy misery.” 

Nile wipes her brow. “I am still happy to be here, y’know. Reminds me of winters up home, in a way.” 

“Yeah,” Andy says, not sure what else to say. “I know you miss home.”

“It’s my brother’s birthday in three days,” Nile says back. 

Andy doesn’t have an answer, so she takes a long swig of her soda and keeps her eyes on the road. 

Nile then asks, “Do you know your birthday?” 

Andy frowns. “Not really. I technically could have changed it every year. January 1, then January 2, until December 31. Don’t think I can now.” 

“Guess there wasn’t a need for birthdays back when you were born. Didn’t have birth certificates or calendars, even. That was a stupid question.” 

“Nah, it’s not a stupid question. We had calendars. Look up the tablets marked twenty-eight times found in excavation sites. Women kept track, even back then. It’s not down to a T as it is today.” 

“Oh,” Nile considers. 

“And, I think my mother would say I was born when...well I can’t remember the constellation. Can’t remember her face, much less how the stars looked those nights. It’s all jumbled up now. It was always warm but on the cusp of chilling when she’d remark such. The last green leaf. Must have been foreshadowing, huh? I’m the last leaf remaining out of all of them.” Andy laughs. “And even if I did remember the constellation, well the precession of the earth and yada yada...who knows.” 

“You could have an estimated birth month, instead? It’s nearing the end of summer, now. We could celebrate the whole month for you if you’d like?” 

Andy looks at her, puzzled. “Why?” 

“Why not?” 

Andy thrums her knuckles against the steering wheel. “Huh. I like the sound of that.”

\--

“I love camping,” Andy corrects when Joe makes a sound of disbelief when she poses the idea. “For most of my life I technically was ‘camping.’” 

“The shift from hunting and gathering was a harsh transition for her,” Joe says, and Andy elbows him. 

“I could spend the rest of my life camping, too,” she insists, stuffing the complimentary chips into her mouth like a squirrel. “Easily.” 

“Says the woman who threatened our lives when the HVAC unit broke for one night a few summers ago? Says the woman who lives off processed foods? Says the woman who just a few minutes ago almost had a tantrum because she couldn’t find her phone? Says the woman who takes sugar on the rim of her margarita? Not salt, _sugar_.” Joe lists off, and Nile snickers softly in the seat across from him. 

Andy gives him a look begging, “And what about it?” as she emphatically dunks another chip into the salsa. 

“I’ve technically never been camping, y’know, in the woods and what-not. It’d be cool to learn survival skills beyond what I learned in training.” 

“See, this is a good educational experience. Another opportunity!” Andy says. “You and Nicky don’t have to come.” 

“Joe and I don’t have to what?” Nicky asks, returning from the bar with a pitcher of frozen margaritas and three salt rimmed glasses and one sugar-rimmed. He scoots back down next to Nile. “What are we debating?” 

“Andy would like to take Nile camping.”

Nicky frowns, “And why wouldn’t we go? If we’re going to be out in the woods, in a secluded area, I could show her how to use my sniper.”

“See, Joe!” Andy laughs, dipping the straw into her slush and taking a heavy sip, sucking her cheeks in. 

“Don’t go too fast, remember Andy,” Nicky chides. “I don’t know why, but American drinks they, uh, Nile, how is it that you say it?” 

“They hit different?” 

“Yes. American cocktails hit differently.” 

“No it’s just...right.” Nile decides. “Well, we’ll need to go soon. Before it gets too hot.” 

“Mm,” Andy agrees. “Leave it to me. I’ll handle this. Three of us are going, hm?” She stares at Joe who rolls his eyes. 

“I am going as well.” 

“Good. Now that’s settled, I have pressing matters to attend to,” and she flips open the menu and starts scanning down the dessert options. 

“We haven’t even ordered entrees--” 

“It’s my estimated birth month celebration, Nicky. I’m going to have a dessert and entree at the same time, chug as many margaritas as I want, and then I am going to fucking _own_ that mechanical bull.” 

Nicky smiles a little and acquiesces. “Of course, Andy. Happy estimated birth month.” 

“Thank you,” and she sticks the straw back between her lips.

**D is for *Drastic Measures***

Nicky rolls out their sleeping bags neatly on the tent’s floor. It’s warm enough, this time of year, to sleep out under the stars. But he likes his privacy, and as of now it would seem, sleeping in a tent is not an option for everyone for: 

“The camping expert still struggles with her tent poles,” Joe announces, crawling in with a laugh. “She also wanted me to tell you that if you or I offer help one more time, she will do something drastic.” 

“Drastic?” Nicky muses. 

“Her words, not mine.” 

“And I meant every word!” Andy calls out. 

Joe looks at him startled. They hadn’t even been conversing that loudly. “Should we move our tent a little farther away?” he poses. 

“I think we should,” Nicky agrees. He rolls up the sleeping bags and joins Joe outside. 

Nile’s sitting on a stump, chin in her hands, watching Andy curse at a series of mismatched poles. She’s bored now; before she’d been carefully edging her fingers to grip the manual before Andy returned with a death glare that had her retreating to safety. Like a poor dog that tried to steal another, scarier dog’s bone. 

“Watch us, Nile,” Joe declares, “watch us dismantle this tent and rebuild it for the second time before our dear Andromache even--” 

“Drastic! I meant it!” 

“Is there room for three in yours?” Nile asks, and Joe laughs. 

Andy studies the manual one last time before tossing it with a huff. “I’ve set up yurts easier than this over-complicated shit tent,” she seethes. “Nicky and Joe, will you please help me?”

“Is the threat of drastic proportions revoked?” Joe laughs, already setting their tent back up. 

“Yes,” Andy pleads. “Revoked.” 

“Go help her,” Nicky insists, once the tight is upright and firmly in place. “And show Nile.”

He unrolls the sleeping bags again on the tent floor and places their duffle bags on their respective sides of the sleeping bags. Nicky’s sleeping facing the zipper with Joe at his back.

“This is good,” he says to himself. 

**C is for *Cryptid Energy***

Nile hears them for the first time on the second night out camping. Where they’re situated for the time being, yeah, it’s a bit tight. Well. Their tent is far but not _too far_ from her and Andy’s, so when she’s woken by a stifled gasp, Andy’s hand is quick to settle her, and she then listens closely and then -- oh shit... 

“You’ll get used to it,” Andy murmurs lazily, releasing her grasp, and turning over. “To be fair, they probably think you’re asleep.’ 

Nile considers the fact Andy said ‘you’re’ instead of ‘we’re’ and reconciles that Andy has most definitely heard them banging over the centuries and that the three definitely have no qualms about _it_ , but Nile is not used to this easy lets-get-it-on-anywhere-anytime-attitude like Andy is. And they knew that. It’s kind of them. 

“If it really does bother you,” Andy adds, and Nile can tell she means it, “tell them, and they’ll take more care.” She tugs the front of the sleeping bag to her chin. “Won’t hurt their feelings.” 

Nile thinks about it. Over the past few months, she’s feeling like she’s really settling into this group. How she’d been hesitant at first when it came to the two of them together. She struggled to wrap her head around their relationship’s timeline: the killing each other to their affectionate selves now. She came to know them better as a couple after getting to know each personally, and she had found herself morbidly comforted by their love. They’ve been like this for centuries; she is just a speck in their timeline. They outdate the current idea of privacy, and it’s natural and fair and warranted and who is she -- 

“Nah,” she slurs resolutely, and she tucks her arm under her jacket-turned-pillow. “I’ll let ‘em be.” 

Andy responds with a ‘mph,’ and that’s that. 

Nile hears another wanton sigh a few minutes later, and it’s followed by a soft hush.

She’s not at the point that she can tell who is who. (Is that a point she’ll get to?) 

“Nicky,” Andy says, after one harsh exhale as though Nile had wondered the previous thoughts out loud. 

“Got it,” she grunts, and she closes her eyes. 

The next morning, she makes an effort to act as normal as possible. No reason to be scandalized, she tells herself. It’s Joe and Nicky. If you act weird, they’ll act weirder. 

Nicky’s making breakfast, rigging a pan over a small makeshift fire stove. There’s a percolator sitting by the edge of the campfire and some metal cups beside it. 

“American squirrels are very different, tastewise, than in Europe,” he says before she even sits down across from him. “And they taste now, differently, than they did in the 1860s.” 

“Is that... squirrel? That you’re making?” 

“Mm.” 

“Um. Good to know.” 

“What is the expression? Knock it and try?” 

“Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it?” 

“Yes. Don’t knock until you’ve tried the squirrel.” 

There’s a loud sudden gasp. “Nicky’s making squirrel?” Andy says from inside the tent. “Oh my god, it’s been so long since -- did you find any eggs?” She crawls out, hair slanted to the side she’d been sleeping on. 

“No, but Joe should be returning with fish soon,” he says. “I tried to find rabbit, but no luck.” 

Nile’s not queasy, okay. She’s killed _humans_ but the thought of hunting turns her stomach. “Great.” 

Later, after Joe’s returned with some fish that Nicky then gutted, flayed, seasoned???, and cooked in the span of ten minutes, Nile’s staring down at her the crumbs of her squirrel on a stick and fried fish. 

“I lived on the island of Atlantis. It wasn’t a city, but an island. Lived there a decade before it sank,” Andy mentions apropos of nothing, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. 

“Really?” Nile cautiously says. It’s too early for this. “You lived _on_ Atlantis?” 

“Mm,” Andy insists. “Oh, and Joe was once drowned by a mermaid, and we’re 82% sure Booker fought a sasquatch and 79% sure he slept with a vampire.” 

“Sure,” she says calmly because if they’re messing with her, she doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of a flustered reaction she would have indulged them with months ago. “What about you, Nicky?” 

“My beloved studied alchemy,” Joe helpfully chimes. “He was very serious about it.” 

“At the time, it was a legitimate pursuit,” Nicky clarifies, giving Joe a warning glance. “Think of it as a predecessor to chemistry.” 

“He thought he could learn to make gold out of dirt.” 

“ _Chemistry_.” 

“But you didn’t face off with any urban legend?” 

“Technically I am one,” he says plainly as he refills his mug. “I have my own Wikipedia page.” 

Nile’s overcome with startling clarity. She’s found it. She’s found the word to describe Nicky: cryptid energy. He’s an enigma; a gentle wild speculation in the footnotes of history. He’s not something that can be defined acutely. 

“Of course,” Nile says. “And where did Booker sleep with this vampire? Were there any other hot one?”

**K is for *Killer of Men***

A cruel thunderstorm cuts camping short by the next morning. As in four in the morning, the wind became so whippingly fast that Andy declared the Estimate Birth Month Camping had commenced and she would very much like to get the fuck out of dodge.

Drenched to the bone, they made it back to the car. Andy considered leaving the damned tent behind, but Joe took over dismantling it and instead charged Andy with packing up the pans and weapons. 

All things considered, she reflects while shivering in the back seat of the car, it was a good trip. Andy got to stare up at the stars while eating a s’more. Joe showed her how to cast a fishing rod. She was able to get in a sniping lesson with Nicky, only to find that said sniping lesso led to sniping rabbits for dinner. 

“I should have been suspicious,” she had said, watching him skin her victim expertly. “When I realized the only edible things we brought were instant coffee and seasoning.” 

She’s relieved to pull into the driveway of the safehouse. “We can unpack later!” Nile insists as the car shuts off. “It’s four in the mornin, and I’m fucking freezing.” 

They agreed, and they hustled inside. 

“After I shower the cold out of my bones, I am going to bed,” Nile told them, disgusted by her wet socks. “Good night.” 

“Fuck the shower, I’m going to bed,” Andy said, but Nicky protested with a deliberate “hm.” 

“No, Andromache please, I don’t want you to catch a chill,” Nicky said, kicking off his soaked sneakers. “Please, go shower. I’ll make you some hot tea.” 

Andy let out an impressive, “Ugh, fine,” swiped a wet lock of hair from her forehead, and promptly stomped her wet self and boots down the hall to her room. 

“She’s like a wet angry cat,” Nile remarks. 

“Our dear killer of men would have killed me and Nicky a long time ago if she could with a look alone,” Joe says. 

“Thank you, by the way, for having common sense and buying a place that has en suite bathrooms.” 

“Thank Nicky,” Joe insists, yawning and joining Nicky in the kitchen. “I almost had us in a tree house.” 

She doesn’t know if he’s joking, and she doesn’t care. “Yeah. I’m gonna shower now.”

\--

They all wake later that normal, their sleeping interrupted by the storm.

It’s noon when Nicky rises, and Nile joins him in the kitchen area shortly after. “It seems like we’re eating brunch,” Nile said, and she helped herself to coffee. 

An hour later, Andy emerges from her room, cocooned in a fleece blanket. Her nose is red. Her voice is a bit nasally. 

“I think you have a cold,” Nicky says, placing a hand against her forehead. She’s warm but not at a worrisome temperature. 

“Great. Haven’t had one in a few millennia,” she gripes, slamming the coffee pot back into its slot. She raises her mug in a faux salute. “Hooray.”

“I’ll drive to the pharmacy,” Nicky insists. “Anyone want to come along?” 

“I’m good,” Nile says quickly. She then clears her throat, stammering, “Like I don’t need anything. I’m good.” 

Joe, his dear Joe, of course agrees. It’s still raining heavily, and Joe insists he drive. 

“Darling, you drive too fast and you know it,” he says, taking the car keys off the hook. 

“Perhaps everyone else drives too slow?” 

Joe scoffs, delighted. “I love you, but you’re not driving.” 

Despite some warranted feedback Nicky gives him, Joe drives with complete and senseless caution all the way to the drugstore. “I almost got out and walked,” he tells Joe who just laughs and blows him a kiss. He begrudgingly catches it and stuffs it into the pocket of his rain jacket. 

“Oh, Joe, they’re playing one of our songs,” Nicky says, the staticky rendition of some song from the 1990s. It might have been in a movie or perhaps a commercial. Either way, it’s one of their songs. 

“Indeed they are my love,” Joe agrees, grabbing a basket. “All love songs are ours.”

\-- 

“I don’t care if I have a cold. I took your gross ass cough syrup. I want to go out to eat for dinner” Andy says, arms crossed, still huddled in a blanket.

“You should rest,” Nicky says. 

“It’s still my estimate birth month. Please.” 

Nicky rubs a hand over his face, then very sternly warns, “No alcohol.” 

“Cross my heart,” she promises. 

They get a cozy booth at a hole-in-the-wall barbeque joint, and Nicky helpfully points out that there is an soup on the special’s chalkboard. 

“I’m getting ribs.” 

Nile agrees. “Yeah, they look good. Places like this, like not chains, that have pictures on the menu are certified good choices in my opinion. Means the place has character.” 

Later, as she sucks off her last rib, she catches Nicky staring at her. 

“What?” she asks, dabbing her mouth with one of the complimentary wipes. “I’m not getting soup, Nicky.” 

“No, it’s just…” and his mouth quirks. “Perhaps I’ve made a strange connection, but I can’t help but think of Adam’s rib becoming Eve’s. The killer of men before me devours a rib. I don’t know. If I was as articulate as Joe perhaps there’s some substance there.” 

“That was a thoughtful observation,” Joe insists, drinking his beer. 

“Joe’s eating chicken wings. Compare him to Icarus or something,” Andy says. 

Nile scoffs. “Do I get a religious parallel to our barbeque?” she asks sarcastically. “Y’all are so fucking much.” 

“Much of?” Nicky asks. 

Nile stares at him then resumes pacifies the conversation with a swig from her beer bottle. 

“She’s drinking beer. We can liken her to Ninkasi,” Joe suggests. 

“Moving on,” Nile says. “Um, new conversation. Um, Andy! Were you actually born with the name Andromache?” 

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. 

Nile nods. “Right. I just wanna know if your name inspired the meaning of Killer of Men or if you got your name from that combination.” 

Andy shrugs. “Can’t say I remember.” 

“Hm. It’s a sick name,” Nile tells her. “Killer of men. What’s one of the girliest ways you’ve killed a man?” 

“Girliest?” Joe and Andy ask simultaneously. 

“Yeah. Like, some dude underestimated you for your woman-ness. Or like that pirate lady that would show her tits to the men she’d kill so they know they were bested by a woman. Or did you kill someone with, I don’t know, lipstick?” She swallows. “I’m a little drunk, I think. I love you guys.” 

“Yes, you’re drinking on my behalf remember?” Andy says, laughing a little. “That’s a question I’ve never really thought about answering. You boys help me out?” 

“Is it sexist? I’d never ask Nicky what’s the boyishness way he killed a woman? I should reevaluate my thoughts of gender and sex,” Nile worries out loud. “I’m sorry if that’s sexist.” 

Andy says, “I killed a man with a tiara.” 

“No fuckin’ way,” Nile gasps. 

Joe scoffs and fits his pint neatly on the coaster. “Andy,” he starts. 

“I killed a few men with a tiara,” she corrects, and Joe sloshes back against the booth, nudging Nicky.

“A few?” Nicky poses, lips curled. 

“I killed an amount of men, more than one and less than infinity, okay, you assholes, with a tiara,” she concede. 

“Yes, we know. We were there,” Nicky says, and he leans slightly into Joe’s hold, placated with the petty win of this game of immortal-chicken-gotcha-whatever they seem to endear, indulge, and partake in eagerly like it’s something they’ve found endearing or fun. 

“I was too,” Andy says back. “And you know what, Nicky and Joe what were the boyish-ness ways you’ve killed someone?”

**M is for *Misused Love Songs***

After a week of hardcore motherhenning, Andy’s back to a smooth 98.7 degrees fahrenheit.

“I want to have fun,” she tells them at lunch. 

“You’re not going out dancing until your bullet graze is completely healed,” Nicky says. 

“I thought we were fun?” Nile jokes. “I can get you some White Claws at the gas station when Joe and I go later.” 

“I’m not sure if that’s a pastry or something, but sure, do that,” Andy says, and she slumps onto the couch. 

Joe and Nile head out when Nicky’s halfway through dinner. 

At the redlight, Nile thuds her head against the window before demanding, “Okay, that’s it. I’m gonna need some sources from now on. I will need proof that yes, ‘Kiss from a Rose’ by Seal was inspired by the two you as much as I need proof that ‘My Heart Will Go On’ is.” 

“By sources--” Joe clarifies cautiously from the passenger seat.

“Peer reviewed, legitimate sources. Andy doesn’t count.” She thunks her head against the headrest about ten times. “Or just let me have the aux cord because if hear this playlist _one more time_ ,” she threatens. “You know, common law dictates the driver gets the aux.” 

“We’re using bluetooth though,” Joe said back, and he dodged Nile’s swat. 

Nicky and Joe have been using her Spotify account. She could be cruel and change the password and make all the playlists private. She could….and she is getting to that point. 

“I just really don’t believe your claim that ‘Cheek to Cheek’ is about y’all.” She bumps her head one more time before the green light flashes. “If you said some, I don’t know _aria_ or seashantie or bard hymn was you two, then maybe. But, if you’re going to expect me to believe that ‘Unchained Melody’ is based on y’all without written confirmation from the Righteous Brothers themselves, I will lose my mind.” 

Joe laughs, delighted. She doesn’t know how Nicky would have responded to this rant, but the fact he isn’t in the car is one of the reasons she decided to bring up her suspicions in the first place. Joe had deliberately scrolled down to select the JN Love Songs playlist even though they were just driving to the freaking gas station, and she lost it. 

For a moment, she considers that in the vague future, if there’s a new immortal, she can claim a bunch of modern songs are about her.

\--

Joe stares out the window, at the traffic, at the buzz of sounds around him. The cacophony of the car’s rumbling engine, the whoosh of the cars in the other lanes, and the love song coming through the speakers

He loves this song. The crooning dooap Nile’d been griping him about conjures up a not so distant night he and Nicky shared together. It was the 1970s? 1990s? He can’t pinpoint it exactly, but he remembers the feel of sheets tangling in his feet. How blown out Nicky’s eyes were, glazed over, staring up at him. The raspy way Nicky called him ‘darling’ and hummed along to the song. 

“You dance so well darling,” Nicky mused, cradling the back of Joe’s skull. “But you can’t fuck to the rhythm could you?” His bitten lips curled into a devious smile, and he stretched loose and happy. “Couldn’t fuck me to a beat.” 

“Is that so?” Joe asked, pausing, readjusting his elbows into a push-up position over Nicky.

“You’re going at me like a freight train while a gentle song plays on our radio,” Nicky supplied innocently, so sweetly. 

“Quite a round about way to tell me I’m not pleasing you, Nico,” Joe said back. “If I’m doing so poorly, you might as well just give me a demonstration for what _rhythm_ it is you want so dearly.” He knew Nicky was ribbing him, but he sounded more hurt and insecure than he’d intended. 

Nicky snorted. “Oh, you poor thing,” he cooed, and he pet Joe’s hair. “Let me on top.” 

Joe rolled over. “Easy, easy. Let me get a pillow behind my head first,” he laughed as Nicky climbed on top of him. Nicky bent down and kissed him firmly on the mouth and forehead.

“Why? Want a view?” he asked, and the little fucking devil sat on his lap backwards. Threw a look over his shoulder with a shit-eating grin and slowly started to move. “See, swinging to the beat of the music?” 

Joe grabbed at his ass, watching it bounce, traced at the light stretch marks over his hip bones.

“Hm, perhaps,” he acquiesced, and Joe relaxed back, fitted his hands behind his head, going along for the ride. “Keep showing me. I’m a slow student.” 

Nicky snorted again, and he braced a hand on Joe’s hip. “Anything for you.” 

Joe closed his eyes, picturing what Nicky would look like from the other side. The way his legs would shift as he worked them backwards; his balls heavy, swollen, and settling between the crevice of Joe’s thighs, and his cock was neglected, bobbing, fucking the air. “Oh, fuck.”  
“Mm,” Nicky agreed. The song on the radio had changed to a more upbeat, dance hall number, and Nicky started to match its tempo. 

“Yes. Fuck down on me,” Joe insisted, praised, and begged. “Fuck down on me, Nico. Fuck down on me.” 

“Put your hands on me,” Nicky countered. “Touch me, darling.” 

Joe hummed and settled his hands around the softer parts of Nicky’s hips. 

Nicky swiveled his hips and threw his head back, gulping and overcome with fucking lust and love and it was too much and -- 

“You want my hand?” Joe said, his throat thick. “Do you want my hand, Nicky?” 

Nicky hummed and nodded frantically. “Give me. Give me that.” 

Joe abandoned one hand from Nicky’s side and fisted around Nicky’s cock. “I want you to come, Nicky. I always want you to feel good on me. To the goddamn _rhythm_ or out of beat.” 

“Impossible for me to feel any other way. You own me completely, my love,” Nicky told him.

Nicky told him that so calmly Joe wanted to call him out for saying soft words while fucking himself rough. _That’s not matching the beat, huh?_ he could gripe. 

No, he wanted to curse Nicky out for saying things like that because it made him lose it. How could Nicky expect him to ever adhere to a fucking song when Nicky makes his heart swerve out of the lane. When Nicky makes his gut feel hot. Because Nicky makes him tremble and -- 

“Fuck,” Nicky hissed. “Fuck me.” 

He was huffing, panting, “I want your mouth. I want to kiss you, Nico. Please. I want your lips.” 

Nicky gulped. “I want this to last, Yusuf, just a little longer. If I let your lips--”

“Please.” The coils of Joe’s neck were taut. His hips were straining; Nicky could have probably felt the sudden erratic loss of control of his thrusts. “Please give me your mouth.” 

Nicky turned back to look at his beloved; his eyes were wide, sweat painted his brow and forehead, and he’d been biting his lips. “How could I resist you?” Nicky said finally, softly, and with a fake put-upon sigh, he lowered himself to let his back melt into Joe’s chest -- similar to the way they slept, just at a different angle -- and he let Joe taste him, clutch at his breast, let his other hand scramble at the jut of his hip’s bone. 

_I’d give you anything. Everything. Anything you want. You know I can’t help but give it all to you. I love to give it to you, Nicky darling,_ Joe thought, desperately sucking on his bottom lip. 

“I know,” Nicky said, as though he had read Joe’s thoughts. “You’re so good to me. Too good to me. Now roll us over. I want to feel you on top of me.” 

Joe did as he was asked, and Nicky shoved his face into the pillow Joe had propped for himself. “Now, make us come. Do not hold back. Do not deprive me.” 

“I couldn’t,” Joe insisted. “Even if I wanted to.” 

“Would you ever want to, my love?” Nicky said, mindlessly. Joe felt so full and content, and he could just parrot back anything because what even was the point of words? Or breathing? Or thoughts? What was the meaning of anything else but fucking Nicky right now? Of making them feel like a combusting star? Of making them feel so light and heavy? Of making them feel so grounded yet floating in space at he same moment? “Would you want to, darling?” 

“No, never,” Joe promised. 

“So make us come,” Nicky repeated, and he closed his eyes again. “Won’t you do that for us?” 

For a second, he considered being asking if he was going at it with the right beats of the tune, but he then realized the song had been over and some fucking commercial was playing. 

_Nicky was speaking, so of course I thought I heard music_ , Joe asserted to himself, grunting, and tugging Nicky’s hips tighter and closer to him. 

“I riled you up, I know. I know, Yusuf,” Nicky mumbled into the pillow. 

“I love you for that,” Joe said, biting the back of his neck, and then he worked to fulfill his promise to Nicky. 

Joe had Nicky thudding against the mattress. The headboard was bumping against the wall. Nicky was _drooling_ against the pillow, biting the case between his teeth, gasping into the sheets. 

Nicky is the best thing to ever happen always. He yanked one of Joe’s hands from his hips and pressed it to his lips so he could suck on it. 

“Don’t pull out. Don’t leave me,” Nicky insisted. 

Joe kissed the shell of his ear. “Oh, Nico.” He kissed the back of his neck. 

Nicky heaved a content sigh, and he grasped the arm wrapped around his middle. “Mm.” 

“And you said you were doing all the work?” Joe said, smug and smiling. 

“I said no such thing.” 

“But you thought it,” Joe teased. “You were thinking that, were you not? When you first mounted my lap?” 

Nicky smiled and pursed his lips. “Maybe. Maybe not. Does it matter?” 

“No,” Joe said, and he kissed him again. 

“Um, Joe?” Nile asks at his side. “Just pick a freaking flavor already. You’ve been staring at it for like ten years.” 

Oh, right. They’re at the gas station. Joe, even lost in his thoughts, had sidled up to the frozen ice machine. 

He shakes his head and the thoughts from his mind and grabs a foam cup. “Nicky likes red slushees, but I like the blue ones. So I get both.” 

“Sap,” Nile comments. “You’re such a sap.” 

“I am,” Joe agrees wholeheartedly. “Thank you.” 

**W is for *Windmill***

“Have you ever had Four Loko?” Nile asks, surveying the wall of cold beers. 

“No, I have not,” Joe says after a thoughtful moment. 

Nile cannot help her smug smile because for once, “I’m about to change your life.” She dumps a couple tall boys into her basket. 

“I’m excited,” Joe tells her earnestly as they check out. “I feel we’re always showing you new things. I like new things very much.” 

She considers answering with, “Well, I hope you still feel that way tomorrow.” Instead, she offers her toothiest smile. “I’m excited, too.” She slips a packet of ibuprofen to the cashier as a forethought for Andy. “I’m so excited.” 

At home, Nicky surveys their bounty from the gas station and raises a brow. 

“Nile has a new experience for us, dear,” he explains, handing him his frozen ice. “The chapstick is in the other bag.” 

“Thank you,” he says, and he kisses Joe on the cheek. “Dinner’s almost done.” 

“He said that twenty minutes ago,” Andy calls from the TV room adjacent to the kitchen. 

“I’ll add another twenty minutes if you’d like?” he offers, and Andy groans.

“Here,” Joe says, grabbing the baggie and putting it in the fridge. “We’ll have it after supper.” 

“We should eat, yes,” Nile agrees. 

Later, after the plates have been washed and Nile’s in her beloved fleece pants and new sweatshirt, she hands out the beer. 

“This drink was...pivotal to my senior year of high school,” she says, to explain. 

“This does not taste like watermelon,” Nicky says, nose scrunching after his first sip. 

She cracks open hers and takes a sip. Nile laughs. For a moment, she’s back in high school. She’s at a sleepover, no a party, no maybe a homecoming after party -- they all blur together-- but she’s back home, underage, sipping on a beer because it looked cool and made her feel cool. And no there’s no taste of thrill-or-being-caught or scandal while she swallows it, but the memory makes up for it. Andy, Nicky, and Joe did not attend high school like she did, so it’s...refreshing, this feeling of recreating something from her past for them, as silly as the ritual of drinking a beer in high school. 

Andy chugs half then wipes her mouth. “This is too full of sugar. Not gonna affect me.”

“I wouldn’t--” Nile starts, but Andy finishes it then cracks open another one. “C’mon, kid. I can handle my beer. I could handle my shitty beer, and I can handle this sweet beer.” 

“Beer used to be so unpleasant,” Nicky agrees, “compared to the selection of today.” He takes another sip and thoughtfully holds it in his mouth before he swallows. 

Joe smells his and takes a long gulp. “Yes, I’d prefer this to that shit we’d drink in the Ye Olde Days.”

Personally, Nile thinks Four Loko’s flavor is equivalent to what it would taste like after crushing a stink bug under her tongue. She takes another sip and settles against the couch. 

The results come swiftly. 

“Honey, we should buy a windmill,” Nicky insists in a slurred mix of Olde English and Ligurian. “I think I’ve always wanted a windmill.” He sucks on Joe’s neck, latched onto him loosely.

“How far is the nearest strip club,” Andy asks loudly, throwing her hand over her eyes. “I’m seeing double. Double titties. Double D titties turn to 3D titties. Physics.” She slides from the couch onto the ground and starts to army crawl towards the kitchen. “I want ice cream.” 

Joe’s scribbling loosely, his grip on the pencil not really a grip really, and he’s barely keeping his eyes open. He’s also laughing maniacally, and his laughs shake Nicky, too. 

“Nicky, I’m sorry I took your sandals back in Cairo in the 70s,” Andy weeps, rubbing at her eyes. She’s given up on her trek to the kitchen and instead is sprawled on the floor, staring at the ceiling. “That light looks like a single titty.” 

“Do you ever wonder what would happen,” Nile hiccups, “if you swallowed one of those ‘grow-a-boyfriend’ capsules? Would he thrive? Should I test it out?” 

“I carved graffiti into the Parthenon,” Andy cackles. “One of the caryatids is me.” 

“I want to make a birdhouse,” Nicky says. 

“I fucked Cleopatra, and I finished two times more than she did,” Andy sobs. 

“I flirted with that one guy with the thing,” Joe elaborates with a flailing gesture. 

“I flirted with him, too, I think,” Nicky corrects. “The one with the --”

“Yeah, him.” 

“I miss Roman Numerals,” laments Andy. 

“I flirted with that one guy with the eye thing in the ‘30s to make you jealous, darling,” Nicky recounts mournfully. 

“And in the ‘23 I propositioned that man with the thick legs to gauge your reaction, baby, I’m so sorry,” Joe bemoans. 

“I slept with Rodin,” Andy adds. 

“We know.” 

**T is for *Taps Temple***

For the last celebration of Andy’s Estimated Birth Month, Nile decides that she would like to prepare her American-Italian-Mash-a-la-Nile cuisine. No one can enter the kitchen but her, and Nicky negotiates at least getting to pick up the ingredients. She rolls off a specific list that Nicky scribbles down, and Andy decides to tag along to supervise, being that it is her estimated birth month celebration’s finale. 

“I’m making stuffed shells, french fries, and garlic bread, and you can’t stop me,” she tells Nicky adamantly. 

Nicky attempts to suggest substitutes for some of her requests that she adamantly shuts down. 

“My bastardization of some sacred pasta dish will not be the end of the world. And so help me, if you don’t get the right frozen garlic knots I will pour all the wine down the sink. I don’t tell you how to cook, _Nicolo_ , so let me have this.” 

It’s rather jarring to hear her call him by his real name, so he nods and admits defeat. He folds the list into his pocket, kisses Joe goodbye, accepts Nile’s warning glance, and tosses the car keys to Andy. 

American grocery stores are always overwhelming, considering how recent the idea is, of so much fucking food, and options for the fucking food, and how consolidated it all is into one place. and they’re everywhere. A century or two ago, one wouldn’t imagine such a mishmashed cornucopia of natural and processed foods. 

Let’s not get into the parking lots, either. 

He grabs a cart from the carrel and goes through the automatic doors to an artificially lit, white linoleum floor marketplace with an auto tuned cover of some song he heard in the 80’s playing overhead. 

“Here, check these,” Andy says, handing him a little booklet. “I know you like coupons.” 

“I do like coupons,” he says, and he flips through the selection. “I’ll keep these in mind.”

“I’m gonna go grab some of my own things,” she says. “I’ll come find you.” 

“Mm,” and he watches her disappear into the maze of shelves. 

He unfolds the list, and he plans a route based on the overhead signage above each aisle. 

She finds him in the deli/butcher area, and she unloads her lot into the cart. Then, she snickers. 

“What is it?” he asks, not sure how the displays of cured meats and cheeses are funny. 

Andy gestures emphatically at the corner of deli, saying, “That’s you and Joe last night, hm?”

Nicky furrows his brow as his eyes follow the path her hand’s leading and -- “Are you serious?” 

“Don’t tell me that’s not what you two were doing,” she continues, eyes locked at the belt of rotisserie chickens. 

_“Andromache,”_ he scolds, but he can’t help but wheeze in agreement. “How...did you walk in on us again? And we didn’t notice?” 

She waves a hand dismissively. “Nah. Joe’s moans were missionary moans.” 

“And you can tell that just by the sounds we make?” 

“Don’t ask me how I know, but just that I do know.” She taps her temple. 

Nicky doesn’t know what to say, so he pushes the cart along towards the produce section. She follows a step behind, obviously pleased.

Studying the array of apples, she remarks, “If it was some all-fours kind of--” 

“Do not continue that sentence,” he warns, but he’s still got that small uptilt to his lips. “I'd rather not be too self-conscious when recommitting the act tonight.” 

Andy guffaws and ribs him in the side before yanking a plastic baggie and dropping a few granny smiths in it. “I’ll bang on the wall if you get too loud.” 

“And we’ll ignore it,” he dutifully replies. “Now, please, tell me; which bundle of bananas looks best for its value?” 

She selects a bunch, and he gently places it in the cart (otherwise, she’d have tossed it haphazardly and bruised the whole lot). He marches on, studying onions and tomatoes as Andy meanders behind. Once he’s started down the seasoning/baking aisle, she comments, “Wanna know how i know it was you on top?” 

“I do not,” he replies instantly, torn between two boxes of brownie mix. “Nile wanted the Betty kind or the Duncan kind? all i know is that the brand is a name.” 

Andy shrugs. “Just get something that costs more than both.” 

“Hm,” he debates, and he grabs a box that’s marketed a whole _half_ -dollar more than the other brands. “I’m assuming this price means the richness rivals that of--”

Andy opens her mouth to say, “Joe’s--” and Nicky cuts her off with a definitive, “Belgian chocolates. Really?” 

“It’s because he squeaked.” 

“Pardon me?” 

“Joe makes a very distinct squeak, or perhaps a high pitched yelp, when he’s getting fucked with you on--”

“Andy, we are in public.” 

“Ah, yes and these Americans can certainly understand a sixteenth century Żejtuni dialect?” 

“Is that what we’ve been--” and he stops, and he frowns. 

“You should work on your awareness, Nico,” she chides, referring to something along the same lines he’d said on the way here. 

“That is fair, but I only said that to you because you almost did not stop behind that school bus.” 

“But I stopped.” 

“Barely.” 

“Still stopped.”

Nicky sighs in both fondness and exasperation. “Alright, now let’s find this sauce Nile insists we dip our french fries in.” he stares at the list crumbled between his hand and the cart’s handle. “She directed us to get this frozen brand of fries even though I offered to make them from scratches of potatoes.” 

“Well, when natural potatoes start coming with whatever preservatives and seasonings she grew up on, we should let pick the frozen ones.” 

“She wants curly and crinkle cut. I’m not sure how I would make them curly to be honest,” Nicky laments, stopping the cart in front of the dipping sauces. “Nor am i sure how to crinkle a potato.” he finds the bottle, scans the back, and hmphs. “This looks like a garlic, no, some sort of aioli. Hm.” 

“Put it in the cart,” Andy says. “Don’t tell me the nutrition facts.” 

Nicky casts another hesitant glance at the label before placing it into the cart. “Next, we need to find this gelatin for some cocktails she wants to make.” 

He strolls ahead and stops in front of the jello. “She said I could pick out the flavors, but she recommended ‘red’ or ‘orange.’ I did not realize colors are flavors.”

“Let’s try green and blue,” Andy suggests. “That reminds me, I want purple flavored sports drinks.” 

As they check out, Andy very helpfully unloads her haul of novelties onto the conveyor belt. As she props a twelve-pack of white claws next to a hefty Blue Bell quart, she says, “You know that you’re the hardest… it’s harder to make you laugh for me.” 

It’s unspoken that (centuries ago) Quynh would have Nicky bowling over across the campfire, snorting out his mead at the waterholes, or cackling until his ribs hurt without effort. She and Nicky shared a subtle, nuanced sense of humor that reaped either disheartened huffs or stomach-clenching hysterics. Sometimes a well-played joke could earn a delighted snort. 

Andy and Joe were each other’s complement back in Ye Olde Days. Now, it seemed like Joe was the only one who could make Nicky laugh unless Andy really tried. 

“You humored me, Andy,” Nicky insists, shuffling through the selected coupons he had stuffed in his pockets. “Your raunch flawlessly caught me off guard.” 

Andy smiled lightly, fitting on some more boxes and cans to the line. “Good to know.” 

Nicky handed the cashier the coupons and rearranged some of the items Andy’s laid out so they could be bagged more efficiently after scanning. Then, he turned to Andy very seriously, “Just know I look forward to repaying the favor.” 

Andy beams. “And I look forward to seeing you try.”

Back at the house, Nile examines the lot and gives a nod of approval. “Okay, now everyone out of the kitchen. If I accidentally stab you with my cutting knife, it’s merely a coincidence of my previous statement.” 

Joe tugs Nicky’s hand to pull him from his spot parked in the threshold between the kitchen and living room. “Dear, let her be. Come watch Jeopardy! with me and Andy. Winner gets bragging rights and control of the thermostat.” 

He relents after some more insistent hand yanking. 

“It’s very nice for her to make us dinner even if you look like you’re about to die,” Joe teases, plopping onto the couch. Andy has an old newspaper and a marker in hand to keep score. 

“Yeah, Nico, she’s giving me the opportunity to kick your ass during _Jeopardy!_ since you’ll actually play,” Andy mumbles, mouth sucking on the bottom of the marker.

**Y is for *You Have My Eyes***

“So your grandmother was from New Orleans,” Andy starts casually at breakfast.

“Third time won’t be the charm, now.” Joe gives her a distressed look. “Let’s not go here again, Andy.” 

Petulant, Andy huffs. “Well, now I obviously can’t. Thanks.” 

“Am I missing something?” Nile asks. She’s found herself asking such concern a lot, especially when ancient ass arguments bounce back like boomerangs. 

Joe looks at Andy. Andy looks at Joe. She crosses her arms, lips pursed. 

“Fine,” Nicky says, closing his book. “Andy’s sense of humor has not changed since we met her. She recycles a terrible joke every time she can.” 

“It’s not a terrible joke. I can remember your face that time--” 

“Can someone at least tell me the joke before you start arguing again?” Nile laments. “Good god.” 

“Few months after we met Andy and Qyuhn, Andy speculated she might be my great-grandmother.” 

“You’re kidding.” 

“He’s not,” Joe and Andy say simultaneously. 

Nicky continues, “She told Joe and I one night that a century before, she and Quyhn had a year-long disagreement, and Andy found herself consorting with a man residing in a northwestern repubbliche marinare. She said, oh the man had a rather large nose. Oh, the man had such large hands. Oh, and I carried his child, weaned it, then promptly faked my death after Quyhn was ready to reconcile a year or two later.” 

“That’s, uh--” 

“And she would say, Oh Nicky your eyes are blue as mine. Perhaps, I gave you your eyes. And this one,” Nicky hooks a thumb accusingly at Joe, “indulged it. Oh, thank you Andromache for giving him his haunting eyes. And Quyhn refused to confirm or deny the claim. I came to finally realize she had been playing up a farce when she pulled the same joke on Booker a few months after we found him as well.” 

Andy snorts, lips curled above the mug. “His reaction was much funnier than yours.” 

“She said similar things like, Oh, I once had an affair with a fine Gaul with light hair and soft eyes. I had a child with him, but I had to leave after the war broke out. I wonder if perhaps your dear grandfather was my son?” 

“That’s just cold, Andy.” 

“She later retracted the statement after that very wild festival--” 

“Ah, ah, ah! We don’t talk about that,” Andy interrupts. 

“-- As she found it very necessary to assure Booker they were not related.” 

Nile blinks slowly and gives Andy a tired look. “You and Booker hooked--” 

“Many times,” Nicky helpfully finishes. 

“Only while miserably drunk or blue balled by battle,” Joe insists. 

“We don’t talk about it,” Andy sharply hisses. 

“That’s the best way to sum up their coupling, perhaps,” Nicky supposes. “Or, they were beneficial friends as you would call it, Nile.” 

“So, Andy was going to try to say she’s my great-grandmother? What, that you banged a guy in New Orleans in the 1900s?” 

“Well, now I can’t. Joe spoiled it all.” 

“Andy never tried to do the same to Joe?” 

“I didn’t want the hysterics of insinuating those two were related,” Andy says. “Though I did get tempted when they were obnoxiously enamored some nights.” 

“I can name my whole family tree,” Joe boasts. “Well, I used to. My memory’s gotten a little hazy over the years. But I could have called her bluff anyway.” 

Nile looks at the three, down at her cooling plate, and then at them again. “I’m going to eat now. Any other history lesson can wait till after I’ve finished my pancakes, please and thank you.”

**Z is for *Zeus Was a Fuckboy***

Untangling her headphones with fearsome tenacity, Nile pleads, “Andy, you’re drunk. When you’re drunk, you start going off. Like, I know you tell me a lot of shit, but if you’re trying to make me believe you and the actual Greek God Zeus were a thing, I will do something...drastic.”

“You’re rubbing off on her, Andy. _Drastically_!” Joe muses from the corner he’s perched in, and Nicky ribs him in the side. 

Andy shrugs, sprawled out on the couch, feet propped lazily on the coffee table. “I’m not fucking with you, Nile. I predate Greek mythology. I banged the original Zeus.” 

“That’s...he’s not even real!” 

“Oh, yeah? Were you there, Nile? Tell me I’m wrong with your own firsthand account,” she lambasts, almost spilling her bottle of wine. “Ha. Didn’t think so.” 

Nile thumps her head against the back of the lounge chair she’s claimed. She considers the many questions and rebuttals rising in her throat before settling on, “Explain.” 

“His name wasn’t Zeus, so to speak. Sounded like that, though. Just like how words become sloppy and mismatched over time, so did his become mangled. He once tried to raid the village I protected. My people considered his presence like ‘thunder’ for the hooves of his men and horses rocked our grounds during the night of his breach as a storm wrests one from slumber. The dumbass lost many men to me that night. I lost my heart, albeit briefly, to him soon after.” 

Nile watches her sentimentally stare at the bottle of wine settled in her legs’s makeshift cupholder. “So…,” she presses to startle Andy from her glazed eyeing of the drink in her lap. 

“I can’t remember everything, but just know that he joined me. Our affair was passionately started and just as passionately ended. He longed to expand. He wanted more. He persuaded some of my own to join him to raid other settlements. I learned over time, that he had many children, in many different places as well. Gossip turned to legend, of wives and children and disgruntled husbands speaking of the strong man of thunder. A man who had a wife that remained faithful though she had reason not to be. Well, that part is not true. I just didn’t go banging men across the Meditterianan. I didn’t go to men or women. They came to _me_.”

“Of course,” Nile agrees warily. 

“His presence spread. His notoriety spread just as his influence did. Then imagination occurs, then you have a set of stories to become a religion. Mythology. All from the man I couldn’t keep in my tent.” Her eyes are pink, and she takes the bottle to her lips for a long drink. “His dick was so lovely, Nile--” 

“Okay!” she sputters. 

Joe and Nicky continue whispering to each the corner of the couch beside Andy. Perhaps they haven’t been listening. Maybe they’ve heard this all before. Maybe-- 

“Tell her about Odin,” Joe insists after raising his mouth from Nicky’s ear. 

“Oh my god,” Nile laments.

**G is for *Garum***

Nile’s walked in on many strange conversations NickyandJoe have, but after a fitful night of sleep, she struggles to find their current topic as endearingly weird as she would have on any other morning.

“I could most assuredly bench press you, Joe,” Nicky asserts, aggressively stirring a mixture in a bowl. 

“Of course, dear,” Joe mindlessly agrees, flipping to a new page in the newspaper. “I did not suggest otherwise.” 

Nile flops down into her seat, causing it to creak and ache more than her back. 

“What was Quynh like?” Nile asks. 

Joe looks up carefully from his newspaper, and Nicky whips his back from where he stands at the stove. “Uh,” Joe starts, taken aback while Nicky says, “She--” 

“She could be a little shit, sometimes,” Andy responds, walking in from the hallway yawning. 

Nile blanches. “I thought you were asleep--”

Internally, she curses herself. The estimate birth month celebrations had really started to chip away at the insecurity Nile felt in the group. She felt like she was really starting to make her place among them, not as Booker's standee, but as Nile Freeman. Bringing up Andy's lost loved one could fuck up the close-knit happiness Nile's wanted to hoard and keep as a constant. 

“Breakfast woke me up. Smells good, Nicky. And also, no way you could bench press Joe.” They all watch her as she calmly pours a cup of coffee then splays out in the chair across from Nile, propping her feet up on the empty chair beside her. “Quynh is the best person in the entire world.” 

Nile bites her lip. “I dreamed of her again,” she says quietly. The salt burns her lungs, eyes, and the lining of her throat. She’s gulping and swallowing, heaving, legs trembling, her nails are so long now and they scratch at the --

Joe clears his throat. “She did know how to get under your skin unlike anyone else.” 

Andy’s eyes are misty, but she smirks. “Y’know, she’s the one that sent Nicky down a path of gambling.” 

Nicky snorts a little. “It all started with dares. Then the betting started.” 

“She always... this one time, she dared me to chug an entire amphora of garum in one sitting. Basically, two liters of fermented fish sauce. She loved that shit, but I never cared for it,” Andy recalls, and for a moment she gags a little, reliving the sensation. “And I drank it. All of it. Then a few nights later I got even by daring her to drink two vases of kykeon during an Eleusinian ceremony. We didn’t know why at the time, but drinking it would, uh, open the mind because of psychoactive ingredients. Some people thought it was the goddesses giving them elevated sight. She went on a fucking _trip_.” 

Nicky places a plate stacked with crepes and fruit in the middle of the table. “Joe, darling, remember that time you confused the peyote with --” 

“We don’t talk about that!” Joe pleads.

“Of course,” Nicky cajoles, and he takes Joe’s empty mug. “It is a delightful memory to me.” 

“Do they still make it? The garrr --?” 

“Garum? Nah, not that I’m aware. Not like it used to be made at the very least. Fish taste different these days anyway.” She takes another sip. “I don’t care for most seafood anymore. I doubt she would, too.” 

Nile swallows the phantom gargle that’s threatening to upchuck. “Okay.” 

“We used to eat fish whole. Crunchy,” she adds, and she shifts her jaw miming the movement. “Kinda wish we’d bring that back.” 

**J is for *Just a Little Break***

“I think I should go to Isle of Wight,” Andy decides at dinner that night. “Alone.” 

Nicky’s brow furrows. “Andy, are you sure?” 

“No more than a month. I need just a little break. It’s not you, it’s me. Et cetera et cetera,” she says blankly before pouring herself a second glass of wine. “You know what I mean.” 

Nile’s eyes flash to Nicky and Joe for an explanation, and Joe slightly shakes his head. _I’ll tell you later._

Nicky folds his hand over Andy’s. “Whatever you need, boss.” 

Joe sits up straighter. “Yeah, I mean Nicky and I could go to Cortina. I know he’s been itching to ski for a while now.” 

“And what should I do?” Nile asks. “My birthday is next month, by the way.” 

“Set up a house for yourself,” Andy says, not sharply but not kindly. “You should start setting down roots, Nile. A month is enough time to get a place. We can all meet there on your birthday. Have a fucking party and whatever.” 

“And where exactly am I setting up a safehouse?” 

“I don’t know. You tell us. It’s your safehouse.” 

“I don’t have any --” 

“We can arrange fake bank statements and references. You can use one of my black cards,” Andy says, and she scoots her chair from the table. “I’m going to leave in the morning. Email me where I should meet you in a month. Good night.” She snags the bottle of wine and leaves, the door to her room slamming shut a little too harsh for it to be an accident. 

“What the fuck was that?” Nile asks. "Is it because my dream? I didn't mean to make her so--" 

“Quynh and Andy briefly lived together on the Isle of Wight before their fateful endeavor on the mainland.”

“Every year, around winter she mourns Quyhn there. She typically goes a month or two after "estimate birth month." Perhaps, the conversation this morning incited her desire to start earlier than usual,” Joe says lightly. 

“I’m guessing that mentioning Quynh is a no-go from now on? If I knew it would make her that upset--” 

“She’s not angry with you. It’s just...best she take just a little break,” Nicky insists. “She loves us all dearly, but she does not want to hold hands forever. I think she wants you to start settling down because, well, she doesn’t want you to rely on her. Since she’s not going to be here forever.” 

“And you two are going where again?” She doesn’t want to sound upset. She doesn’t want to intrude. They probably need a little break as well. 

“Cortina probably. Maybe Val Gardena. Nicky loves skiing, and I’m a rather good snowboarder if I say so myself,” Joe says. “If you’d like to come, I’m sure--” 

"I thought everything was going okay. I was starting to feel like I really belong. And I fucked it up just like that?" she says incredulously. She's not sure if she's mad or heartbroken. Maybe both. "Should I go apologize to her?" 

"I think it'd be best to leave her," Nicky says. "Nile, it's okay. Besides, I'm sure you'd like a month away from the two of us as well. What's the saying, Yusuf?" 

"Distance makes the heart grow fonder," he recites. "A month away might be good for us all. If you want to come with us, we won't min--"

“No, Andy’s right. I need to start on my own eventually. Might as well be now,” she says. “I just don’t know where to go.”

“Leave it up to chance,” Joe poses. “I’ll write down some major US cities and let you pick one out of a hat.” 

“I mean, that’s not a bad idea,” Nile figures.

“Better than no idea at all,” Joe says softly. 

She watches Joe yank off a paper towel sheet, and Nicky hands him a pen. Does he carry pens with him? Nile wonders briefly as Joe scribbles some names down. 

“And I’m guessing Chicago is not in the mix,” Nile says bleakly. 

“It is not,” Joe says apologetically. “Too risky to leave up to fate.”He swivels the backwards baseball cap he’d been wearing and dumps the little pieces of paper in and shakes it. He presents Nile her options. “Close your eyes and pick.”


	4. A Month Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's get the band back together.

**S is for *Snowglobe***

She’s just finished scooting the couch against the wall (for the hundredth time since she can’t decide if she likes it centered or closer to the window better) when she gets the knock on the door. 

Nicky’s holding their bags and a pastry of some sort, and Joe presents bottle of wine. “Your first safehouse! Congratulations!” Joe says, kissing her on both cheeks as she lets them in. 

“It’s good to see you two,” she says as Nicky envelopes her into a hug. “How was the flight?” 

“Fine, fine. Well, this one snored the whole way,” Joe teases, ribbing Nicky in the side gently. 

“Joe drooled on my shoulder on our taxi to the airport,” Nicky retorts. 

They kick of their shoes by the door, and they move over to the kitchenette to place down the dish and bottle. “How are you finding Atlanta?” Joe asks, admiring a streak on the marble countertop. 

“I’m still settling in. Wish there was a _Safehouses for Dummies_ manual I could read.” 

“Yours is far better than our first. Ours didn’t even have walls. You remember that, dear?” Joe insists as Nile leads them back to the living room. 

“Mm. It’s a lovely home, Nile,” Nicky says, settling on the couch with Joe. 

Nile wavers in the threshold between the living room and kitchenette. “Can I get you guys something to drink?”

“As an Atlantien, I assume you’re stocked with sweet tea and Coke?” Nicky muses.

“Ha ha,” Nile deadpans. “I have tap water and coffee at the moment.” 

“Coffee would be nice, thank you,” Joe says. 

She reheats some two mugs in the microwave, and she watches them watching her. “What?” 

“Nothing, nothing,” Joe insists. “We missed you.” 

“I mean it was just a month,” Nile says, carrying the mugs over. “Thanks for coming to see me for my birthday.” 

“Of course,” Nicky says, throwing his arm around Joe’s shoulders. 

“Much easier to manage than an estimate birth month celebration,” Joe teases. 

“If I could make one request that might be a little much, but Nicky, you can make anything, right? If I showed you this recipe for a lemon cake that I used to get on special occasions growing up, that’d be amazing.” 

“I’d be more than happy.” 

“Cool! It’s called Portillo’s lemon cake. They discontinued it, but I’m sure there’s copycats online somewhere.” Nile beams. “Andy emailed me that she’s gonna get in late tomorrow, so I was thinking we could go visit the Olympic Park and then the aquarium, then when she’s here we could go eat somewhere, then come back here for cake.” 

“Andy’ll be sorry to miss out the opportunity to rant about the _real_ Olympic Games,” Joe says. 

“I’m assuming she was there to see them back in the day, huh?” 

“Oh, well she wasn’t allowed to actually see them. She was killed once for sneaking into the stadium. Women could only own chariots and horses that participated but were refused entry. She commissioned many successful chariot teams. She once had an Andy-typical drunk rant about how beautiful the Statue of Zeus was. She and Quyhn loved the region of Ilia, and Andy seriously considered assassinating Theodosius the First,” Joe explains. “She and Quyhn tended to witness the Heraean Games instead, but there were no horse competitions. And what was that phrase Quyhn would say?” 

“It was 'Kyniska is the only woman who loves equestrian acts more than Andy,' or something like that,” Nicky says, and he even raised his voice a pitch for authenticity. “The woman, Kyniska, was the first woman to win an Olympic game via her chariot and horse training. Andy was very jealous and a bit infatuated with her.” 

“And she hates how there aren’t any equestrian events in the Olympics anymore,” Joe continues. “If you think Nicky and I just rambled, you should hear her opinion.” 

“And do not let her start on Roman chariot racing,” Nicky warns. “She might try to do a demonstration.” 

“She considers sports of today as frail to those in Ye Oldest Days.” Joe snickers. “She thinks we should revert back to competing nude just for fun.” 

“I don’t know about that,” Nile says. 

“Well, at least this is Hotlanta. Imagine competing nude in Oslo or Sochi.” 

“People Atlanta don’t actually call it Hotlanta,” Nile corrects. “It’s more like Eht-lana.” 

“Well, since you’re now a resident here,” Joe says, “you could if you want.” He and Nicky settle on the couch. Now that someone’s sitting on it, Nile realizes she does actually prefer it more towards the window. 

“Oh, and speaking of weather,” Nicky chimes, and he unzips his dufflebag to present Nile a snowglobe. 

“Aw, thanks,” she says. “You can put it on the mantlepiece. I might start a collection.” 

“Nicky has a very impressive coin collection stored, in what, Vienna?” 

“No, Zürich. My stamp collection is in Vienna.” 

“Right, right.” Joe settles into Nicky’s hold. “She’ll kill me if you tell her I told you this, but Andy very seriously considered investing in the beanie baby craze.” 

“ _No_ ,” Nile gasps. “Tell me more.”

**V is for *Very Small Gesture***

Nile shows them to a guest bedroom. “Compared to Goussainville, this is the Four Seasons. To my standards though, it’s still a work in progress.” She quickly flits over to the bed and yanks a price tag off the throw blanket draping the end of the bed. “The shower’s got this cool temperature thing, so if you can’t figure it out just let me know.”

“It’s perfect, Nile,” Joe insists, carrying their bags and propping them against the chest opposite the bed. 

“You’re a lovely host,” Nicky adds. “This is more than we’d need.” 

Nile blushes a little. “Thanks. I’m not good at interior design, but those HGTV shows helped.” She clasps her hands, unsure what to do with them. “But yeah, um, let’s start leaving for dinner in twenty.” She moves a bit, grabs the door hinge, and sways on her feet. “I missed you guys.” 

“We missed you. I can’t wait to show you this video of Nicky faceplanting in the snow,” Joe says, and Nicky nudges him in the side playfully. 

“I was gonna have us go to a new Italian place, but since you just got back from Italy and I don’t want Nicky to rant at me in public, I think we should try this new Greek place instead.” 

“Ha,” Nicky scoffs. 

Nile laughs and closes their door. 

“She looks good,” Joe says quietly in Italian, still a bit in the habit. “I was worried.” 

“I know,” Nicky says. “She’s an independent spirit, Joe. She’s tougher than you think. One spat with Andy will be meaningless eventually.” 

“She’s more like Andy than I think she realizes,” Joe agrees. 

“Nile died around four months ago,” Nicky points out. “She’s adjusting better than--” 

“We shouldn’t compare her to him,” Joe insists. “I was worried at first. That she’d think we were substituting him with her.” 

“I don’t want us to make the same mistakes we made with Booker, Joe,” Nicky says. 

“We’re not entirely to blame.” Joe wipes at his face. “Now, let’s get changed. I’m sure my drool is still on your jacket, no?” 

Nicky smiles a little. “I love you.” 

“I love you, too.” 

As they get dressed, a nagging thought pesters Nicky. Their previous discussion stung, and he doesn’t want their first night back with Nile to have a looming cloud of doom hanging over their heads. 

“She asked me, once,” he says, kicking out of his jeans. “Nile asked me once what first drew me to you. On a walk in Hungary. She was so curious.” 

“I’m sure it was my perseverance that did the trick.”

“It was that you made me laugh. Do you remember the first joke you gave me?” 

Joe buttons up a new shirt. “No, I’m afraid I can’t.” 

“We could barely understand each other at the time. But at one marketplace, this one merchant was cursing up a storm at you for some reason. Red in the face. And when he turned his back, you pointed at a red fruit then back at the merchant. It was humoring to me. I had never thought you would want any conversation or interaction beyond what was necessary. That little comparison changed how I thought I could be with you. A very small gesture, perhaps one that had not been one you gave much thought, but I was so touched by it.” 

“Oh, darling,” Joe sighs. “Your joy is precious to me.” 

Nicky crosses the room to kiss him. “I know. Perhaps, what I’m trying to say, is I want to have a moment like that with Nile if I haven’t already. A moment where she can see me differently. See us as more than just her new comrades-in-deathlessness.” 

“Dear, I think you already have,” Joe insists. 

Their dinner with Nile goes well. She laughs at Joe’s video, she insists Nicky not get a haircut, and then recounts her timeline of moving and settling down. 

“At first I didn’t like it,” she supposes. “I haven’t really been alone in so long. Since Basic, really. I had to relearn how to be on my own, I guess. It wasn’t as terrible as I first made it out to be. I think I get it now, what you were trying to say a few weeks ago. It’s almost like you guys are really wise and experienced.” 

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have included Atlanta in the pile,” Joe says. 

“Why not? I’m digging it here.” 

“Oh, the city is great. It slipped my mind however that driving in Atlanta is a whole other thing.” 

“Shit, you’re right. 75 is the speed limit here,” she says. “It’s wild.” 

“Hm,” Nicky considers. “Doesn’t sound that bad.” 

Nile snorts, almost choking on her drink. “Yeah, I missed you guys.”

**B is for *Bonding While Bounded***

“The lemon cake was still in the oven,” Nicky says, thumping his head against the concrete wall. “I assume it is still there.”

“Happy 27th, Nile,” Joe deadpans. 

“Yeah,” Nile agrees, flexing her wrist tight against the rope. 

“Unless they had the manners to take it out,” Nicky continues. “I am afraid it will be burnt by the time we leave this place.” 

“When we get out of here, I want to go out and fucking party. Go on a fucking bender. So, no worries.” 

“You only turn 27 years old once,” Joe says.

“And 127 once, then 227 once, and 327 once…” Nile starts but stops. She’s overwhelmed enough by the capture; an existential crisis won’t help either. 

She takes stock of their surroundings for what must be the third time however long they’ve been in here: Joe’s across from her, and Nicky’s to her left. There’s one door with an impressive range of bolts and locks sealing it shut, no windows, and a camera in the upper right corner. She can’t tell if it has a microphone, but it is motion-sensored. There’s a measly light fixture flickering above their heads. They’re tied up. The captors have not made contact since depositing their drugged-out bodies here after infiltrating the safehouse. 

Nile’s safehouse. Her first one, and it’s been compromised in less than a month. 

On her fucking birthday. 

Great. 

“We’ll be out of here long before then, I’m sure.” Joe offers a smile, but Nile’s preoccupied with shimmying her wrists together against the rope. 

“You will get a rash,” Nicky tells her. “Don’t rub against the rope so harshly.” 

“I think I can squeeze out if I break my wrist and --” 

“Don’t do that, please. We don’t want them to know about us. And if you were to free yourself, you’d have no way of unlocking that door before they come back and gas us again,” Nicky says, infuriatingly impassive. “It would be a pointless endeavor. We’ll wait for Andy, yes?”

Nile sighs. “I don’t want to just sit here.” 

“But to sit is all you can do for now. Save your strength, and wait,” Nicky says. 

“I have to hand it to these assholes. It’s very old-fashioned of them to use rope of all things. No cable ties or cuffs, we got rope. Makes me nostalgic,” Joe says after a moment of silence. 

Almost charmed, Nicky adds, “This is some very good rope. I’d like to hold onto it once we’re free. Could repurpose it. It’d be a shame to waste it.” 

“Sure, I’ll make sure to keep my rope in tiptop condition,” Nile snarks, but she knows they’re only trying to make her feel better. Any other time, she’d find their banter endearing, but now their optimism is annoying. Out of place. “Would you like to repurpose the rags they’re gonna probably stuff in our mouths too?” 

She’s pissed off, but not at them. Or maybe she is. Maybe she’s mad that she had been on her own for a month, and the two waltzed back into her life just the night before and they’re all acting like they’d never left. A month is still a long time to her. She can’t pick up where she left off with ease like they can. 

She’s mad Andy’s not here, and she’s mad at herself for making Andy need a little break in the first place. 

She knows she’ll regret snapping. She’s scared out of her mind. She’s trying to seem tough. She wants them to focus. Focus on what, she’s not really sure. 

A neurotic, nagging voice in the back of her head insists that if they would all just stay serious and alert that somehow Andy’d find them -- signaled to their location by their manifested energy of anger and concentration. She knows that’s a fantasy. More far fetched than immortality. 

But she’s not in the mood to joke. She doesn’t want to be happy _here_. This damp postage-stamp sized basement doesn’t deserve any good vibes from her. This is wrong. This shouldn’t be happening. This is not fun or supposed to be fun. 

“Nile, please--” Nicky starts. 

“I’m sorry I’m not as calm as y’all about this. I don’t want to feel better. I want to get out.” She exhales hard, and then she frowns. “It seems like nothing good ever sticks. Every time I start to think I’ve got this, that I’m supposed to be here, and that I know what I’m doing, something always fucks it all up. And apparently, it’s been me for two out the three. Bringing up Quynh. Doing a shitty job securing a place for myself.” 

She’d wipe at her nose, but she can’t really without scuffing up her face. “Look, that wasn’t fair of me. I’m just so...I’m sorry--” 

“No, you have nothing to be sorry about. We will be okay, I promise,” Joe insists. He nudges the tip of his shoe against hers to get her to look at him. “Andy’s gonna be here any second now.” 

“First time she sees us in a month and it’s breaking us out,” she gripes. 

“Well, you did break us out and you had known who me and Nicky were for literally less than a night. We’re going to be okay,” Joe promises, and he gives her a sure smile. 

Nile takes Joe’s reassuring smile, and she closes her eyes and rests her head against the cold, jagged concrete wall. 

After a few minutes of silence, Nicky says, “It’s unsettling.” He nods up at the camera staring impassively at them in the upper corner. It swivels to catch his movement. “When they see us so relaxed and laughing. It’s one of the reasons we do it. It is comforting to us, and it unnerves our captors.” 

“It freaks me out,” Nile says. “That I’ll get used to stuff like this. The way you both have.” 

“Oh, we’re not used to it, so to say. This is not a skill we’ve learned. We just conduct ourselves better than we had our first few times,” Nicky says. 

“First few times,” Nile repeats, and the three simple words carry so much weight but have been said so nonchalantly. “First few times.” 

“Yes.” 

“It’s just… I am just so far behind, and it’s frustrating. I don’t know why I try and compare myself to you three, but I do and I just...I don’t want to be the weak link.” 

“Nile--” Joe starts softly. 

“It was my place. I was in Atlanta all by myself, and maybe I didn’t see the signs someone was following me. I should have been more careful--” 

“It is our responsibility to teach you. We weren’t there to teach you, and that is on us. But you have to learn and mess up otherwise you’ll be stagnant in training. You are anything but a weak link,” Nicky says. 

“And you can do things Nicky, Andy, and I can’t. Nicky can do things I can’t do. Andy can do a ton of things but not all of them are useful, and she’s not perfect either. And we learn from you, Nile, more than you realize. We do not see you as lesser, or equal, or more than equal. We just see you. You’re irreplaceable and invaluable.” 

“With time, you will grow. You’ll learn, adapt, and continue because you must and because you can. I am certain of that.” 

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay?” 

Nile raises her binded hands to scrub at the hot tear that streams down her face. “Thank you,” is all she says, and that’s all she can manage. She can finish having this crisis later, when she’s not tied up and cramped in a room with a camera pointed at her. 

“Of course,” Nicky says. “And we’ll help you with your next safehouse.”

“If you don’t want a house, so to speak, I’m sure Andy knows some caves you can look into.” 

Stifling a laugh, she says, “If said cave doesn’t have AC and running water, then I’ll have to pass.” 

\--

Andy comes to the rescue six hours later. She’d called in some favors with some mercs that she had in her pocket after what was it, ten years ago? Sixteen? It was a very unpleasant operation that indebted this small group to come to Andy’s aid, no questions asked. Nicky recognizes the tattoo on one of the hands untying him, but he doesn’t comment such. 

“I’ll keep the rope,” he tells Tattooed-Hand as he rises to his feet. “May I please borrow one of your firearms?” Tattooed-Hand gives him a glock, and Nicky double-checks it’s unlocked and loaded. “Thank you.” 

He makes sure Joe’s behind him and lets Nile take the front as they head out of the room and up a dark stairwell. 

In the doorway out of the house, there’s a line of tied-up captors sitting against the wall. Nicky passes them a scolding look. 

The air is cool, and it’s very early morning. Crickets are chirping. Trees are everywhere. The driveway is gravel. The house is quaint and wooden. It’s a serene setting, and Nicky appreciates that despite the circumstances. 

“Come on!” Andy’s honks on the horn of a beat-up pick up, and she’s both pissed off and relieved. “Why is it that everyone gets captured without me?” she asks. “I leave for one fucking month!” 

“Such a lovely welcoming committee,” Joe quips. 

“What about the--” Nile starts. 

“They’ll take care of the rest. The camera wasn’t saving anything; it recorded on a five-minute loop. We’re good to go.” 

“Called in favors from, what Montreal ‘14?” Joe comments, shuffling into the back. 

“No, Vancouver 2010.” 

“Ah.” Nicky slides in next to him, and Nile takes the passenger seat. “And where are we now?” 

“About 75 miles north of Atlanta. We’re up in the mountains. It’s gonna be a while till we’re on an interstate south.” 

“You’re radiant as ever, Andromache,” Joe says, winking at her in the rearview mirror. 

“Good to see you, too. Not exactly the reunion I had thought about, but c’mon. We’ve had worse.” 

Nicky cringes at the memory. “Yes, we have. We missed you dearly.” 

“Same,” she says in her nonchalant way of being sappy. 

“I’m assuming my apartment--” Nile starts. 

“Copley will take care of it. But yeah, it’s compromised. Send him a list if there’s anything you want to keep because we sure as hell are getting out of this country and not coming back. Not until we know who’s tracking us. Got us two flights booked that depart at 0700. You boys are going to fly out to stop at Heathrow then continue onto Schiphol. Make sure to let that lady’s daughter, or granddaughter is it now? know so she can make sure we still have power and whatnot.” 

“The November House?” Joe asks. 

“Yep. Nile and I will go to Düsseldorf then drive up. We’ll print the passes at Hartsfield. There’s some burners in the console, and your new passports too. Get familiar with your new identity, Ms. Niagara Feldman.” 

“Niagara? Really?” 

“I was more preoccupied with other urgent matters at the time to put too much thought into your fake name.” 

“Like the cake?” Nile asks lightly, and she gives a soft glance to Nicky as she digs through the console for the burners and passports. 

“Charred by the time I arrived,” Andy responds. “Nicky can bake you a new cake in Amsterdam. Oh, happy birthday by the way. Belated birthday, now I guess. Hooray.” 

“Hm,” Nile hums, tossing their passports and phones to Joe. 

Nicky flips his open, expecting to see another variant of N. Smith, so he’s perplexed to see, “You named me Joseph Jones?” 

“And I’m now Nicholas Smith?” Joe adds, delighted. 

“Again, I had to address more pressing issues,” Andy laughs with a shrug. 

“This feels strange,” Nicky decides. 

“Well, you already are an extension of Joe given how much he’s been in--” 

“May I ask for your new name?” Nicky interrupts. “I’m sure it’s as well-thought out as ours.” 

Andy taps her knuckles against the steering wheel. “Andromeda Schiadaressi.”

Nicky guffaws. “Such an ordinary name.” 

“Mhm. Oh. There are some carry-on bags in the back. Each has a fuck ton of Euros in ‘em. Pick one when we park.” 

“Do we need a carry on bag?” Nile asks. 

“No, but it looks strange when you go onto a plane without anything. People do notice.” 

“If I had known that it was a big deal at the time, I would have bought a paper bag to carry with me,” Nicky laments. 

“I don’t want to know,” Nile starts as Andy opens her mouth to explain. “Wake me up when we’re there.” She pillows the side of her face in the crook of her elbow against the window. “Or if we stop to get food. I’m starving.” 

“We’re stopping at the first Waffle House I see,” Andy asserts. “And that is a promise.”

**U is for Upper Pocket**

Joe takes the window seat, and Nicky takes the aisle. It’s not something they ever discussed out loud, but it’s how they will almost always arrange themselves on a flight. Two seater or three seater. It’s a small comfort to be in a two-seater, and they’re in the absolute back of the plane.

“Want me to put your bag up?” Nicky asks, staring pointedly at the small duffle bag at his feet. The one he’d snatched out of the trunk very perfunctorily in front of Andy before handing it to Joe. 

“Yes, thank you.” Before Nicky takes it, he unzips it to grab a book he bought waiting for boarding. He tucks it into the sleeve beside a laminated pamphlet showing the safety instructions. He reads them. He’s jumped out of planes into combat too many times to count, but he can’t say the same about the rest of the passengers. He does this on every commercial flight, he thinks. And he never remembers the instructions. 

Nicky loads his duffle and keeps the backpack he snagged in front of his feet. “Well, Nicholas, I bought snacks in the little store. In the upper pocket,” he says softly as he straps in. “I like those biscotti they hand out, so if I’m asleep --” 

“I know, Joseph,” Joe jokes back. “And I’ll make sure you get a coffee, too.“I’ll also email Mrs. Bakker that we’re heading there. Give her enough time to check on the place.”

“Mm. ” Nicky shifts against the back of the seat and tilts his neck back. In Ligurian he says, “I’m going to close my eyes now, Nicholas. I’m so tired. I love you.” 

“Yes, dear, please sleep,” Joe responds in the same. “I love you, too.” 

Nicky purses his lips, and Joe meets him for a small kiss. Joe takes his hand and holds it during take off. He always likes to watch the ascension; the colors of an early morning sky and how small the world below seems. 

He falls asleep reading his book, still holding Nicky’s hand.

\-- 

When they land nine hours later, it’s Nicky that nudges Joe awake. “We’re here, darling.”

It’s a groggy, mindless procedure of maneuvering from the plane to baggage claim to the taxi line. Joe recalls the November house’s nearest landmark, and they speed off. They then take another taxi to the neighboring corner a few blocks from the house, grab a bite at a Febo, then eat and walk the rest of the way. 

They’re improperly dressed for the weather, so Joe huddles to Nicky’s side as they go as the fast food isn’t warm enough to keep him from chattering his teeth. 

It’s paranoia that feeds this need to be careful, especially after their brief capture yesterday. Nicky doubts that they’ve been tracked all the way here, but he’s learned a lesson about trust and assumptions made in good faith during these past few months. 

If Mrs. Maria Bakker, the great-granddaughter of Mrs. Hendrika Visser of their original neighbor and eventual sporadic housekeeper of the November House, is somehow in on this plot of kidnapping, then good on her? 

“Ah, thank god the heat’s on. She’s such an angel,” Joe croons, basking in the heat. Nicky tucks the key back in its hiding spot for Andy, and he joins Joe inside. 

“We had just come back from the cold, only to return to it, hm?” he muses, stepping out of his shoes. 

“Suppose you’re right.” He pops a crick in his back, and he wanders into the kitchen. “The good woman stocked our cupboards. We won’t have to go to the market tomorrow morning.” 

“So, we can go to bed, yes?” Nicky says coyly, hoisting the duffle over his shoulder and heading down the hall. Mrs. Bakker clearly freshened up the bed and made it, creaseless and firm. Nicky wants to make it a mess. “Break in the sheets?” 

Joe follows, dropping his bag to the ground. “You think we’ve kept our goods in stock? We’ve not been here since what, 2015?” he wonders, circling the bed and shifting through the bedside table’s drawer. “Appears we haven’t.” 

Nicky shrugs. “We can make do. I’m tired, but not that tired.” 

“We can work with that,” Joe agrees, and he unbuckles his belt. 

Nicky ends up on top, his hand stroking them both. “Here we go,” he says softly. “Had rough few days, haven’t we? Haven’t touched you like this since our last night in Italy, yes? Four nights without you? Five? A tragedy, such torture.”

Joe’s loosened out, splayed on his back, hands crossed behind his head. His toenails scratch at the back of Nicky’s calves when Nicky gives them a teasing pull. His eyes are half-lidded.

\--

Nile sleeps most of the plane ride. The adrenaline crash, the anxiety she had, and her internal crisis wore her out. She dabbles with reading some literary classic Joe insisted on, and it’s boring enough to have her close her eyes and resume sleeping.

She and Andy didn’t get seats together for ‘security reasons,’ but she’s just a few rows up. Nile’s seated next to a very nice old lady that smells like Chanel No. 5 that has similar routine with Nile. Andy sitting in the aisle, so she didn’t see who she’s seated with. 

She’s sluggish when they land and during the haggle for a rental car to drive to Amsterdam. 

“You’re still tired?” Andy asks, as though she isn’t clutching to her coffee cup for dear life in one hand while the other acclimates to the stick shift. 

“I’m just...yeah. I’m exhausted,” Nile agrees. “But I swear, when I’m all rested up I’m going out. I’m celebrating my birthday so hard that I’ll need a few days to recover.” 

“Ambitious,” Andy teases. “Nicky keeps ibuprofen in the upper pocket of most of his bags, so if you ever need some, it’s there.” 

“I still don’t get it,” Nile says. “I mean, Joe and Nicky got blown up and their hair grew back to the way it was. Your ears are pierced. I can get headaches and stomach aches. How?” 

Andy shrugs. “Perhaps the best way to look at it is like a video game. Each time you die, you start back up where you were. Our bodies return to its most recent stasis. Like an ecosystem. None of us dye our hair, so I don’t know how that works. I think it’s just refreshing a webpage.” 

“Hm,” Nile considers. “But the stomach aches and head aches?” 

“If it isn’t an external breach, I think it’s up to your immune system to fight it. We die of disease, sometimes Nile. Don’t ask Nicky about 1918.” 

“Noted.” She rests her head against the window, strangely soothed by the thudding against her temple from the glass. “But I won’t age.” 

“Yep. I’m excited to finally see myself as a silver fox,” Andy muses. 

Nile considers correcting the term’s usage but shrugs it off. 

For another half hour, Nile stares at the passing traffic. “I am sorry about--” 

“I overreacted,” Andy insists. “I wasn’t mad at you.” 

“You don’t need to be mad at yourself instead,” Nile says. 

Andy shrugs. “When I go to Isle of Wright, it’s not just anger. It’s more of a mourning, well...reflection. Not just for Quyhn. For Lykon. And now Booker, too. Quynh and Lykon will always be touchy subjects for me. But I shouldn’t have made it seem like you can’t talk about them. For that I’m sorry.” 

“I did get some good out of the month alone,” Nile says. “As Nicky would say, it was a blessing in disguise.” 

“Hm,” she hums. 

Nile rubs at her thighs before finally asking, “How long did Lykon live?” 

Andy bites her lip. “Keeping track of time back then, with dates and calendars… he thought he died for the first time before he turned thirty. He was on his own for about fifteen years until Quyhn and I found him in what, 29 - 30 BC? The same year Caesar captured Alexandria. He was with us until, I’m guessing, the late 800s.” 

“Why did he go so quickly?” 

“I don’t know. It was his time. Now it’s mine.” 

“What was he like?” 

Andy smiles sadly. “He could be a little shit, even more so than Quyhn sometimes. He was a total smartass, too. He was closer to Quyhn, but we both shared a love for horses and rode often together. Didn’t care much for sweets, but he loved spices and saltier dishes. Probably could have chugged an amphora of garum with more enthusiasm than I did. He never got seasick. He had a beautiful laugh. He was very proficient with adapting to a region quickly. Learned the language, politics, and culture at each of our homes as though he was native. He charmed the ladies with total expertise.” She wipes at her eyes. “I miss him. I’ll try a delicacy or see some new technology, and one of the first things I think is, god, Lykon would have loved this. I do that for Quyhn now, too.” 

Nile clears her throat. “I know it's been so long. I always wonder how long I could mourn my dad, and now I'm guessing --" 

“I still mourn Lykon. With him, it’s at least resolute. He’s gone. With Quynh, I still have a thread of hope tugging at my heart. It’s hard to mourn someone you still hope to see again.” 

“The same way I mourn my mom and brother, I guess,” Nile says lightly. 

“Yeah, kinda like that.” She wipes at her eyes again. “Enough emotion for now. Save the rest for the boys. How about you tell me about Atlanta.” 

“How about you tell me about Atlantis?” 

“Fine,” Andy laughs with a shit-eating grin. “For starters, it was an island.” 

“Oh come on.”

**X is for *Xyridaceae***

Nile remembers sniffing a candle at a bargain store that was titled “Old Books Smell.” It had a gray wax, and a lovely silver cap, but it did not smell like old books.

This parlor, where Nicky and Joe comb through old furniture in the pursuit of some old map that would prove one of them right in an argument, smells very much like old books. The November House in general smells _old_ but not in a musty, unpleasant way. There’s whiffs of the perfume that had been kept in the cut crystal bottle in Nile’s current bedroom. She can smell the old fire stove when she walks to the kitchen. It’s home built on refreshingly familiar, worn scents. 

From her spot on the puffy sofa, she watches the couple dive into what must be _another_ recurring spiff because Nicky picks up right where they left off with his first out-of-the-blue complaint. 

“This gets on my nerves,” Nicky had said, turning to Joe and showing him three diaries. 

“I am not so wasteful,” Joe says back immediately. 

“Darling, you bought this for three pence in 1817. You wrote one poem...no not even an entire poem! and discarded the poor thing and bought another journal. We have too many!” Nicky laments, pouring over the messy contents of their bombe bureau-secretary. They’re looking for a certain book to prove a point to the other, and they’ve just finished digging through two cupboards. “You buy one, use it once, then buy another.” 

“Either your memory is amazing or--” Nile starts, and Nicky presents the faded journal with the the still adhesive labe’s pale ink of ‘three pence.’ He then opens to the first page, dated Juni 19, 1817 in a loopy cursive. “Ah.” 

Joe snorts, on his knees ciphering through an old chest. “Well, some journals don’t match the mood of the piece.” 

Nicky clicks his tongue. “So, you bought this book in London, bring it here, only to write in it once, and then discard.” 

“You’re the only constant in my life, dear,” Joe says sweetly, but he still receives an exasperated glare from Nicky. 

“Can I read the half-poem?” Nile asks. “Or is it one of _those_ poems.” 

Nicky reexamines the page, and his lips curve slightly. “It’s safe for your eyes,” and he passes it to Nile. 

She pulls the book closer to read the fainted ink, and the cursive is enough to make her eyes squint. After her eyes glaze over the words a few times, she realizes that no this is not in English that’s probably why I can’t understand it. 

“I think this is in German?” 

“No, it’s in Dutch,” Nicky says. “Here,” and he takes the book back. He clears his throat and translates:

 _Yellow and blue  
green and calm  
my quick flash, bolts of stillness  
a glossy moon, a quiet creek  
eyes speckled with xyridaceae  
darling essence of nature --_

“What’s the one word? Zi-rid--” 

“Xyridaceae is the botanist name for a family of flowers. There are many native genuses in the United States, perhaps you know them as ‘yellow-eyed grass.’ I think I was referring to the _xyris complanata_ in this case. The feathered yellow-eyes that grow in China and Vietnam.” 

“Obviously,” Nile says, considering calling them both endearingly obnoxious and romantic smartasses.

“I do like that imagery,” Nicky comments, his thumbs swiping over the words. He and Joe give each other a meaningful look. Nile coughs. 

“Maybe you can write one about my eyes and the flowers you see in them,” Nile suggests. “Use up another page.” 

Joe tears his eyes from Nicky to smile at Nile. “Of course. I’ll just have to make sure the journal outfits the poem appropriately, or I may have to buy one that will.” 

“ _Yusuf_ ,” Nicky threatens mildly. 

“Aha!” Joe exclaims, yanking an old atlas from the trunk. He flips through the pages and shows both Nicky and Nile the small red splotches on the page. “I told you that you spilt wine on our nice Civitates.” 

Nicky frowns. “I don’t recall that,” he says petulantly. “Can you prove it was me? Not Andy? Or Booker--”

“Darling, this is from the 1600s. So no, it was not Booker. Andy was at sea at the time.” 

“Can you prove it wasn’t you?” 

Joe opens his mouth to protest then closes it with a glare. “That’s it. That poem is now dedicated to Andy. You no longer have little yellow flowers in your eyes, Nicky.” 

Nicky shrugs his shoulders. He selects another battered journal from a drawer and flips to the first page. “Well, try reworking this into Andy’s image,” he says coolly. “ _Quilts sloping over loving hips like --_ ” 

“Nope!” Nile objects. “Or at least read it untranslated.” 

\--

“So, you’re going to cash in your birthday raincheck?” Andy asks, watching Nile decide between two sets of earrings. “Amsterdam’s one of my favorite hotspots for getting hammered.”

“Well, you guys are coming with me, right?” Nile says, like it’s obvious. She smooths the lines creasing on her black dress. 

Nicky and Joe look up from this huge ass puzzle they’ve been methodically conquering on the rug by the fireplace because they’re literally the oldest men in the entire world, and Joe says, “We thought you’d want to go alone? We’re not hip and cool, Nile.” 

Nile scoffs. “Well, I don’t speak the language, and based on Andy’s previous statement, seems to me that y’all know the best holes for getting wasted. Besides, would it be safe for little ole me to go all alone--” 

“Fine, alright,” Joe laughs, and he hoists himself up. He gives Nicky a hand and helps him up. “I guess we should change. I think I have some grunge clothes from the 90s somewhere here.” 

“I get to veto privileges for all outfits!” Nile says. She looks at Andy, propped on the couch in her typical tight jeans, steel-toed shoes, and glitzed ears. “You’re good, Andy. Might need a jacket.” 

“Hm,” Andy sniffs. “When you say you want to get hammered--” 

“I mean Four Loko squared.” 

“Damn. Alright. We’ll need to get started quickly. Only so much time in a night.” She lifts herself up the couch. “You might have to help them pick out an outfit because we could be here all night if you just keep sending them back to change. They’re going to try too hard otherwise.” 

Later, after a stop at a dispensary, a carbs-only dinner, Andy leads them into a bar. “This is the pregame. There’s a couple night clubs we can go to after.” 

They raise their shot glasses when Andy proposes a toast. “To our Nile. We’re very happy and lucky to have you.” 

“To our little sister, Nile. So sweet and ruthless,” Nicky offers. 

“To Nile, to whom I owe a poem about her flowery eyes though her most beautiful feature is her heart,” Joe says. 

Nile swallows a lump in her throat. “Um, to you three. For dealing with my shit and teaching me and accepting me.” 

They knock glasses, Nicky cheers a chin-chin, and they down their glass. 

“Yeah, I hope there are more of these to come,” Nile says, overwhelmed with hope and a sudden feeling of _belonging_. 

“If you mean shots,” Andy jokes, and she waves the bartender over. “Then you got it. But if you meant moments like this, then yes. We can have many more nights like this too.” 

“And not just for birthdays or estimate birth month celebrations,” Joe adds. 

“As long as you can keep up, old man,” Nile teases. 

“I won’t have to catch up. We’ll always be at your side.” 

Nile smiles. “Thank you. I love you guys. Now, teach me how to order a beer in Dutch.”

**Q is for *Quite Alright***

As she precariously tucks herself in, still seeing double, and realizing she's lost an earring, Nile decides, "Yeah. I think I will be quite alright." 


End file.
